New Zealand drew similarities with Australia’s cricket collapse as soul-searching began Sunday into the All Blacks loss to the Wallabies in the Rugby Championship decider.
Australia stunned the world champions with their 27-19 victory in Sydney on Saturday to claim the rugby crown while on the other side of the world the champion Australian cricketers were losing the Ashes series to England.
In a prescient comment before the rugby Test began, All Blacks captain Richie McCaw noted the Australian cricketers were folding under pressure.
“Pressure does funny things to good players if you allow it to get on top of you and that’s often what happens,” McCaw said.
“The English got their tails up and the other team didn’t and it can be pretty nasty.”
When the rugby started the pressure told on the All Blacks from the start when lock Brodie Retallick dropped the kick off and from there the All Blacks game was riddled with inaccuracies.
“We wanted to start well and when you do that it puts you under the hammer right away,” McCaw said.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen said there could be no excuses for the loss.
“Pressure can create errors, but I think some of it was forced on us by our own decision-making when we weren’t under pressure.”
Former All Black Richard Loe, in his Herald on Sunday newspaper column found fault across the board saying Australia won the forward battle and singling out debutant wing Nehe Milner-Skudder as the only New Zealand back worthy of praise.
“I have all these texts from a number of Australians who used to drone on about how good they were at cricket, saying rugby is their game now,” Loe said.