Peter Jackson column: Wales, it’s time to give All Blacks a real Test!

When Wales touched down in Auckland the other day, the All Blacks did their level best to ensure them a soft landing. In doing so, their spokesman, assistant coach Ian Foster, attempted what many would have seen as the impossible – trying to put an up-beat spin on the Welsh rout at Twickenham.
Coaches, even of the All Black variety, like nothing better than talking up the opposition, a trite habit made all the more so when the team in question has shipped five tries to England in rapid time. Foster ploughed on regardless.
“They’ll be better for the hit-out,” he said of Wales. “I’m sure it will benefit them as a group….”
As players and coaches for Waikato, Foster and Warren Gatland go back a long way, most famously to when their provincial team ran the 1993 Lions off their feet. Maybe Foster wanted to make some sort of pre-emptive strike aimed at averting the danger of the All Blacks considering the series a soft touch.
Whatever the reason, the notion of a team being all the better for a five-try hiding is illogical to put it politely. It conveniently ignores the demoralising effect of losing to, of all people, England.
Steve Hansen knows that from bitter experience. He, too, has been in charge of a Welsh team hit for five tries at Twickenham, in 2002 when, in sharp contrast to George Ford, Jonny Wilkinson kicked ten out of ten and England reached 50.
A double World Cup winner, Hansen has far more important matters to think about than what sort of threat, if any, Wales will bring to Eden Park on Saturday. For starters, there are six all-time great All Blacks to be replaced and another World Cup to be won.
Something else will also be on his mind, New Zealand‘s historical tendency to start their season on a bum note.
England provided the most recent example, losing by a single point in Dunedin then by a street in Hamilton seven days later.
Ireland endured the same experience two years earlier. Dan Carter got the Kiwis off the hook in the first Test with a rare drop-goal and the Irish duly paid for their impertinence at taking them the distance. Seven days later the All Blacks blitzed them 60-0.
France went one better and beat them in the opening June Test of 2009. Three years before that Ireland led for more than an hour in Hamilton before subsiding in the last ten minutes.
The All Blacks didn’t always get away with it. On an unforgettable June night at ‘The Cake Tin’ in Wellington, an England pack reduced to six by two yellow cards refused to be pushed over on their way to winning the 2003 World Cup. Even Scotland once gave New Zealand a fright in June before going down 11-4 in Dunedin in 1981.
Wales have never been close, losing all ten Tests to the All Blacks in the Antipodes by an average margin of 42-9.
They have lost all three two-Test series there by cricket scores (71-19 in 2010, 106-12 in 1988 and 52-12 in 1969). The series starting on Saturday will be different, if only because three Tests are being played.
Somebody must have thought it was a good idea. At a time when World Rugby keeps banging on about player-welfare and then fails miserably to impose any limit on international fixtures, three Tests sounds like one too many.
According to Gatland, the defensive flaws at Twickenham are “easy to fix”. In that event, why weren’t they fixed at half-time or, better still, before kick-off?
Test rugby is strewn with examples of teams hitting rock bottom one week and shooting off into the stars the next. If a win is asking too much, it is not unreasonable to suggest Wales break the habit of a lifetime in New Zealand and give them a run for their money.