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Your support makes all the difference.New Zealand should be winning this World Cup without having to engage anything that looks remotely like their highest gear, but it was the uncomfortable grinding sound of metal on metal that characterised a discordant win over a determined Tongan side.
That the most dominant team in sporting history, as the All Blacks like to call themselves, have a tendency to evaporate in the face of the most intense pressure is a tendency from which the reigning world champions are meant to have relieved themselves.
In the second half, they cantered gently off to victory. But for anyone else with designs on lifting the Webb Ellis Cup - and there are a few - this was a thoroughly comforting evening. The only non-Kiwi without a smile on his face at the full time whistle would have been the St James’ Park groundsman. His life’s work has been vandalised.
A narrow, 14-3 lead at half-time is the statistic most worth remembering from this match, and with the All Blacks down to fourteen players too, That Tonga were emboldened enough to kick for the corner rather than take a kickable penalty with a couple of first half minutes left to go tells its own story. They didn’t convert, but their efforts were sufficient to earn Kieran Read a deserved yellow card for collapsing a maul just yards right under the posts just a few yards from the Kiwi line. And he was captain for the night.
In this tournament format, champions are permitted to have the occasional dip before going on to lift the biggest prize of them all, but they tend not to. In the process of demolishing the St James’ Park pitch, Ma’a Nonu won his hundredth cap and sealed it with the seventh and final try. He’s been through the highs and lows, but rarely an empty, stuttering, semi-lobotomised encounter such as this. The gulf between this, and the energy and execution laid on by Australia against England at Twickenham last week was a class apart. And if Australia live up to last week’s highs again on Saturday night in their mouthwatering clash with Wales, they will surely have established themselves as the team to beat.
New Zealand might always carry that honour. But first they must conspire not to defeat themselves. On Friday night, they didn’t quite do it.
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