Australia beat the All Blacks in the semi final of the 2003 rugby world cup. I remember the day pretty well.
Murray Deaker started his radio show with a ridiculous spiel about how and why we were going to win the game, and how far the Aussies were off the pace. To be fair, most other media commentators had already written the Aussies off.
But the Deaker speech was really bad . . . way over the top, almost surreal.
My (Australian) wife laughed at the time and said that ‘this guy (Deaker) should shut up, cos the Aussies were gonna win and that the All Blacks were going to look really stupid’
I totally agreed, and said that the hype that week had done nothing more than set us up for a big fall. The only way was down.
During the game my worst fears were realised at one of the first rucks. The Aussies entered it hard and fast, you could see they were fired up.
It was/is depressing. Another World Cup blown. Gregan summed it up perfectly with his ‘four more years’ taunt. An arrogant thing to say, but jeez he was right on the money.
I remember the crazy headlines from the Sunday Star Times newspaper. When we won our quarter final, the headline was ‘Demi Gods’ Seven days later it was ‘World Chumps’ That pretty much sums up the state of our rugby media.
Nnearly four years later, I wonder how bad the media hype machine will get. TV3 already have bill boards advertising their free to air coverage of the cup. A digital countdown has been in operation in downtown Auckland for ages . . . .
History is beginning to repeat itself and as the hype gets bigger, so does the potential fall.
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[...] of the reason we lost to Australia in the 2003 rugby world cup semi final was because we were not mentally tough enough. On the big stage, the Aussie players knew how to [...]
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