Kiwis made the rest look mediocre

At the start of the sporting year, there was no doubt what stood out as the most appetising contests on the calendar – England were bidding to return the Ashes to their country and the British Lions were going to New Zealand for a long-awaited series against the All Blacks.

The cricket series was everything it was billed to be, and more, with several close, tense finishes culminating in a rare success for England, who regained the Ashes for the first time since the late 1980s.

But the rugby equivalent turned out to be the damp squib of the year. It was so anti-climactic that many had lost interest in the series long before the final test arrived, with the All Blacks completely annihilating the composite team from Britain and Ireland.

In the process they made a mighty statement about the spread of global power. If the north had become the dominant force when England won the World Cup in 2003, it appears that the southern hemisphere had the bit back between their teeth when Sir Clive Woodward’s combination was so comprehensively outplayed.

Only once did the Lions really challenge, and that was in the opening minutes of the second test, when they scored an early try. But the All Blacks did not take long to wipe out that early deficit and regain their firm control of the series, and by the end of the match their flyhalf Daniel Carter was being hailed as a rugby wizard.

Unsurprisingly, Carter was named as the IRB World Player of the Year when the season came to an end, and the All Blacks scooped most of the big awards. Their only serious challengers during 2005 were the Springboks, who beat them in Cape Town in the first Tri-Nations test before coming within four minutes of repeating the trick in Dunedin in the return match.

The Boks have won two of their last three matches against the Kiwis, and it does appear the All Blacks, who like to run the ball from all over the field, are vulnerable to the South African style, which is based around physical defence and the modern rugby union dictum that sometimes it is better for the opposition to have the ball.

England, competitive in their match against the All Blacks at Twickenham in November, also appeared to further confirm that the New Zealanders, when up against a team with a solid forward pack and a defence capable of closing down space and getting in their faces, might not be as invincible as some like to think.

Yet there is no denying that they are the clear favourites now to win the World Cup in France in 2007, and the rest of the nations have the task of playing catch-up to Graham Henry’s awesome combination. Or should that be combinations, for the All Blacks showed on their Grand Slam tour as well as in the final test against the Lions that they have enough depth to play winning rugby with vastly different playing personnel.

That in essence is what the rest of the teams, and in particular South Africa, have to try to do over the next 12 months – they need to somehow emulate the New Zealand ability to create a couple of tiers of international class player.

Despite another awful year in the Super 12, with just the Bulls being an exception amongst all the local mediocrity, there were events during the course of the season which suggested that this was not a complete impossibility.

We refer here of course to the evidence provided by the South African under-19 and under-21 teams that there is indeed plenty of raw talent in this country just waiting to be nurtured and properly utilised. Both teams won their world competitions this year, and if you consider that the Boks came second in the Tri-Nations only because of a few bonus points, it was not a bad 12 months for South Africa.

What is desperately needed before the next World Cup, however, is a victory over a top northern hemisphere nation in the northern hemisphere. The Boks failed in their most recent quest when they lost to France in Paris in the last match of their end of year tour.

Their chance will come next year when they play England twice in England in November, two matches which might require some clever selections from coach Jake White at the end of a year which is going to see rotation of players and the need for rest ahead of the World Cup figure feature prominently in sports copy.

The world champions appeared to be getting their act together towards the end of 2005 after what can only be described as a disastrous Six Nations campaign in which it was unfashionable Wales, and not England or France, who emerged as the top European team.

Ireland, like Wales, featured more prominently at the start of 2005 than they did at the end of it. Their sudden demise as a power in the space of just a few months might have been one of the talking points had their decline not been matched and superseded by that of Australia.

Ah, those poor Aussies lived through a nightmare in 2005, with eight defeats in nine matches seeing the end of Eddie Jones as coach and possibly in time it will be shown to be the exit of George Gregan as captain too.

Part of the Australian implosion was down to the global switch in emphasis, which has seen aspects of tight forward play such as scrumming become important again. But it is also true that Australia, so long relatively injury-free, had a freak attrition rate in 2005 and we all know that depth is not one of the strengths of Australian rugby.

You would think it was a problem with British rugby too for some sections of the British media still appear to think that the Lions series was lost because of the big controversy of the year – the supposed spear tackle which cost Lions skipper Brian O’Driscoll his tour in the opening minutes of the opening test.

Rugby is a tough game and southern commentators accept that injuries such as the one sustained by O’Driscoll are just the unfortunate price that has to be paid occasionally in such a highly physical sport. In London though there are many who think that O’Driscoll was done a dirty and that the series was lost because of this incident.

Of course, it is complete rubbish, but then it is also nice to see the north back in their old mode of trying to find excuses for failure. It surely signifies something.