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LETTERS FROM AL: NZ TOUR WILL PREPARE CANADA FOR RWC

May 31, 2007

Ottawa, ON

Canada is in the midst of wrapping up it’s games in the 2007 Churchill Cup and soon will be heading home to Canada following their last match against the USA on June 2nd. However a large part of the Canadian Churchill Cup contingent will not be around long in hockey country before they will have to pack up once again and depart on June 8th for New Zealand.

In New Zealand, Canada with hopefully a full complement of players likely to be part of the Rugby World Cup squad, will play two matches.

The most foreboding one is a game against a primed and hungry full New Zealand All Blacks test side. Plus another fixture against an under 21 New Zealand side comprising of top young Super 14 players, many who no doubt will go on to full test status with New Zealand in the months and years ahead. Without question two very daunting games for Canada on their short two week tour, but two games that will firmly set the bar high for what will be expected of the Canadian players as they prepare over the next couple of months to then compete this September on the world stage in the RWC taking place in France.

A lot has been made of the fact and questioning why would Canada take on these fixtures -but why wouldn’t you want to? Any player worth his salt wants to play and test themselves against the best and New Zealand certainly fits that bill.

No matter what the results are Canada will come out of that match against the All Blacks knowing it has been in a game and with all due respect for the rest of Canada’s opponents in the months to come the games will be easier from here on in. When you’re thrown into the fire like Canada will be- lessons will be learned both in what you should and shouldn’t do in a given situation.

If you want to be better as an individual player and as a team you play the best and in doing so you pick up the small subtleties and nuances that allow great players and teams to make the plays and decisions that they do. Not only will the players benefit from playing in New Zealand, a rugby hotbed, but so will the coaches, as the Kiwis in my experience are very generous and gracious in helping countries like Canada improve their game.

Having said that, there will be no quarter given nor asked in the actual matches. New Zealand rugby is tough, physical and uncompromising. If test rugby is a few major steps up from club rugby then a test match where the opponents are the All Blacks takes it to yet another level. Their foot is firmly on the accelerator at all times and for Canada there is no weathering the storm like a typical test for the first ten minutes. This will be a case of weathering the perfect storm for 80 minutes of hell. Canada will need to battle through the adversity it faces and to maintain composure by virtue of strong mental discipline in what will surely be an almighty physical battle.

Canada as a hockey nation faces opposition in which they are often clear favourites like New Zealand are regularly in rugby. But no matter how well Canada in rugby defends to a man for long passages of time, mistakes are eventually made and defences sooner or later broken down.

The equalizing balance in how large or small the score line could be in a game of hockey when the defence does break down (say the trap) is ultimately the goalie. A team and a goalie clearly under the gun can make a one sided match seem closer if not possibly stealing a win by virtue of a goalie standing on his head as a last line of defence. In rugby we have no real last line of defence when things break down other then the fullback, but sadly he can not drop down into a butterfly position and stretch his entire body with his goalie pads to cover from corner post to corner post to thwart scores from occurring.

The sad part in rugby like I alluded to last week is that you can play great rugby for the better part of a game but if you do not do it for a full 80 minutes you’re in danger in the end of leaking a lot of points. Final score lines can be misleading in how well losing sides have actually done in the course of a game. But Canada is not in the business of just trying to keep the score close. At the end of the day you want to win. However, like in any sport though, some games are more winnable then others. This is one such game- thus the positives and the gains from the match against the All Blacks will perhaps be more telling a little down the road.

I have had the good fortune of playing the All Blacks on two occasions, once in 1991 when Canada played one of it’s better games in that year’s RWC quarter-final (NZ 29 - Canada 13) and a second time in 1995 (73-7) a couple months prior to that year’s RWC in South Africa. The second game does not bring back as fond memories as the first (if you can take any solace in losses) because we were totally out classed and I personally was terrible. We played the All Blacks following a scorcher of a match in Fiji that left me so messed up that I was hospitalised overnight (which was a story in itself the details of which I won't share with you here). As a result I was a wreck for the All Blacks match and I have no memories of the Fijian ordeal, other than by what others told me and by virtue of a grainy video of my last conscious moments in the match prior to succumbing to my collective injuries suffered in the game.

I have often been asked if we were a demoralized lot after the NZ game? Well perhaps briefly (getting crushed is hard to swallow), but as experienced a side as Canada had down there in the South Pacific we didn’t come into that NZ game in the best frame of mind. We had some off field issues to contend with and we had some beat up guys on the pitch to play a fired up All Blacks side that was fresh off a trial match with players looking to solidify their position for the up coming RWC. Now you better have your ‘A’ game when you play as formidable a foe as the All Blacks and we didn’t and rightly took it on the chin.

That All Black side was a beauty and to this day, as I have said many times before with all due respect to South Africa the 1995 RWC winners, that NZ side was the best team in the world that year and if the RWC final match up was actually a hypothetical NHL best out of 7 the Kiwis would have won it in 5.

Easiest thing for Canada to do would have been to wallow in our own self pity after suffering such a humiliating loss heading into the RWC but we didn’t.

We took away valuable lessons from that game and regrouped like we did in 1991 and in years prior to that when we played NZ sides as part of the CANZ (Canada Australia New Zeland) series and used it to our advantage. In the CANZ series Canada was beaten badly by the likes of provincial sides Otago and Waikato on a couple of occasions but we got better as a team for it. We proved how much we had benefited from those tough losses by playing the Kiwis tough in the 1991 quarter-finals where as without that CANZ experience we may well have been cannon fodder for the Blacks that day in Lille France. However four years later we were very much canon fodder for the All Blacks but then as mentioned we used that painful experience to our advantage in games to soon follow.

You can’t help but be better as a player and as a team when playing sides as skilled, polished and clinical as the All Blacks are. You ask any player who has had the good fortune to represent their country in rugby and no doubt to a man they will tell you they want to play against the top sides the world has to offer and perched firmly on top of that list is New Zealand.

Canada, will God willing, come away from this short tour with no major injuries but more importantly, a team better educated in rugby and how to play and carry the pace of a match that will pay dividends for the individual players, coaches and team as a whole come this Fall’s Rugby World Cup.

In 1995, if not for being placed in the pool of death with Romania, South Africa and Australia we may very well have made as much noise in that Rugby World Cup as we did in the previous one. We beat Romania handily (34-3), played the defending 1991 RWC Champions Australia tough (27-11) and the same goes for 1995 RWC champions to be South Africa who we lost to (20-0) in a tough match that unfortunately is remembered more for the infamous brawl then for the robust rugby that was played by a depleted but determined Canadian side.

I was proud of how we played as a team and I think we took a lot of useful things away from the New Zealand pummelling we received prior to the RWC and applied it and addressed it in our pool games. If we had simply played Fiji and maybe say Tonga on that pre RWC tour and not NZ I don’t think we play as well as we do in that 1995 RWC. Furthermore I know that personally I used the embarrassing score line and my poor showing in that NZ match as motivation to prove to the world that I was a better player then I displayed and that we, Canada were a superior team then we showed. We were a proud bunch of Canadians, many who were involved in the 1991 campaign, and we wanted to send notice that the 1991 RWC was not a flash in the pan.

Canada has some very good rugby players at present and I don’t think Canada is going to get crushed like everyone is forecasting but they will no doubt be tested to the extreme and it will be interesting to see how the team responds during the game to the pressure the All Blacks will impose on them. Similarly it will be worthy of note to see how Canada reacts, responds after the game and to carry lessons learned forward.

If Canada has any real inclination of doing something special in the 2007 RWC then the tour to NZ that they are undertaking is needed. Winning against Fiji or Japan is no given but if we are indeed to beat them and want any chance of beating one of our much higher ranked remaining 2007 RWC pool opponents either Wales or Australia then you best go into the Lions den to see where you stand.