They are calling it ‘the spectre of 1991’.
Two days after the All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup, New Zealand Herald ran a front page story calling for focus ahead of the 2015 campaign to the retain the trophy.
That is how seriously they take their rugby in New Zealand.
The poor Super Rugby form of national team captain Richie McCaw, then, has proved headline news in the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Out of all the prominent loose forwards playing in New Zealand, Richie McCaw is the WORST tackler, by some margin pic.twitter.com/3E9rA6ZIYm
— Niall Anderson (@NiallGunner) April 19, 2015
Not only is McCaw flubbing his tackles. he is only managing 0.6 turnovers per game. This is down from his normally impressive average of 1.5.
New Zealand’s rugby fans often worried if they would ever win another World Cup, after their 1987 success. The 1991 team failed to retain their trophy, in England, and are generally considered to be one of the poorest AB sides in the past 40 years.
McCaw told Newstalk ZB, ‘”I’m probably not playing to the standard, to my peak, and it’s probably the same for a lot of us.
‘But when you’re going backwards it’s hard to have an impact and, in the last couple of weeks, I certainly haven’t had the impact I would have liked.’
First a terrible injury to Aaron Cruden, now this.
Expect to see McCaw raising the Webb Ellis trophy at Twickenham on October 31, so.
