Robertson needs to redress the balance

IT WAS a cheap shot, admittedly, but only a pacifist or a fool would spurn the opportunity to kick the New Zealanders when they're down. "What's the difference between the All Blacks and an arsonist?" your columnist asked a radio host during a breakfast broadcast in 1998, eventually breaking an unnervingly long silence with the punchline: "No arsonist would lose his last five matches."

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Whatever the opposite of "storm" might be, that's how the joke went down. Which was fair enough from the perspective of a nation largely unfamiliar with losing twice in a row. Only once before in the country's rugby history had they suffered on such a scale and on that occasion, way back in 1949, their national team had the excuse of playing two Test series simultaneously against Australia at home and South Africa away. Indeed, that year's games in Wellington and Durban took place on the same September day, which, as Hercules himself might have said, was asking a bit much.

If the current Blacks are unlikely to end this calendar year in the red, so to speak, the Rugby Championship meeting with the world champion Springboks at a seething Ellis Park in a few days' time has more than a whiff of peril about it, and while the phrase "tipping point" is miles over the top at so early a point in Scott Robertson's rule, the degree of tilt caused by a heavy defeat might leave the new coach in scramble mode.