The ADHD Blacks

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

Clearly, a pattern is emerging. They spend days before each test in media interviews regurgitating vacuous self-help management nostrums about ‘walking toward the pressure’ and ‘embracing the opportunity’ - only to set their dials to full-throttle for 60 minutes on-field before running out of gas.

Perhaps we can put it down to generational change - a break-dancing, surf-riding, Gen-X guru of self-discovery indulging a bunch of over-pampered, over-stimulated, over-praised Gen-Z whizz-kids with a complete deficit of patience, grit or an ability to think on their designer-booted feet.

To me, this looks like attention-deficit, hyperactivity-disorder on the rugby field. It works in flashes as the adrenaline kicks in among the players, eager to impress teacher and add to the highlight reels. Then when the buttons they are pushing on their virtual X-Boxes no longer respond they cave into fits of ill-discipline. “I’m bored now.”

It’s hard to see any grown-up, hard-nosed thinking going on in the AB circles. Perhaps it’s another consequence of what happens when you sell out your culture to US private equity who are all about ‘brand value’ over substance.

Of course, there are the real, practical problems facing the squad - the vacuum left by the departure or retirement of the likes of Whitelock, Retallick, Aaron Smith and Mo’unga, the forced reliance on old warriors past their use-by dates, the absence of impact players off the bench, questions over Scott Barrett’s on-field leadership, questions about poor conditioning and late game fades.

But beyond all that is a suspicion that apart from motivational New Age nostrums about self-expression, there really is little going on below Razor’s sun-bleached locks. If there were, why is his team throwing the same tantrums in every test? It is becoming so predictable - his charges race out of the blocks like men possessed, build a handy lead and then blow it in a flurry of low-percentage miracle passes, Hail Mary high-balls to nowhere and brain-dead ill-discipline.

Are boots applied to backsides anymore, or are the grieving miscreants ‘counselled’ and denied their PlayStations for a day?

Nurse?