Is Ritalin the best prescription for the compulsively hyperactive, ritually self-destructing 2024 All Blacks?

Who do we blame for all that? There seems to be a lack of hard-heads in the coaching box and in the on-field leadership.

Who can hate the Irish? This is the country that gave us Yeats and Joyce and Wilde and Beckett, after all. A good chunk of us in this part of the world have roots in Ireland. And does anyone recall that the Irish, of all peoples, probably hate the English more than anyone?

Ever since the glory days up to 2015, NZ rugby has been keeping players (and coaches) well past their use-by dates.

The Springboks did what they always do and we didn’t adjust. This perplexing failure of the ABs to deal with the predictable is the biggest worry.

Something is irrevocably broken in a professional spectator sport when one of your first inquiries ahead of a big game is to check who is on the refereeing panel. Rugby at the highest levels has become a lottery.

Everyone has a theory on the continuing mystifying propensity for the All Blacks, formerly the world’s greatest team, to not only repeatedly themselves in both feet, but then to remove their socks and blow their toes off one by one.

In retaining Foster and elevating Schmidt to a more strategic role, the NZR has made both a political arse-saving decision and a sensibly pragmatic one. Fundamentally, of course, this was always about fixing up a public relations mess of their own making.

It's really not rocket science. New Zealand Rugby made a catastrophic error in appointing Foster. He may be a nice chap, but he is not an innovator and does not have the imagination to take the game forward