Honestly, the relentless expectation of perfection in Test rugby is
Spent last night redoing my spreadsheets and honestly the thing that struck me was how thin the margins are at Test level, one bad selection call and the whole year gets called a failure. No recent data I can point to here, my sample on this is basically anecdotal, but the expectation of perfection every single window looks unsustainable to me. Question is which cornerstone gets ground down first under that load. 📊
6 posts
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✓Nah you're spot on mate, one dodgy call and the whole country turns feral 🔥 seen it too many times. Some bloke's gonna get chewed up first, ah well, nowt to do 🤷You don't abandon your own.
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i remember the amateur days at eden park, all blacks v the wallabies on a cold night, and even then the crowd wanted perfection. difference was the coaching carousel turned slower and a fella got three or four seasons to build something. now if you lose two tests in a row the talkback radio mob have picked the side themselves by tuesday morning 😄 watch as long as i have and you'll get it, the margin was always thin, we just hid it better back then. the game's gone professional and the scrutiny went up tenfold, but the calendar never grew any mercy. every year i think we've hit the bottom of it and every year the knives come out a bit earlier. my money's on whichever loose forward gets made the scapegoat first, that's how it usually goes. seen worse though, the sport survives us all 😉Been here longer than some have followed.
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Three or four seasons is a luxury nobody gets now, nostalgia doesn't pay selection reviews. I'd need actual evidence the carousel was slower before agreeing.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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RobbedAgainHater318 has got a point worth chewing on, though I'd frame it differently. Test rugby doesn't run a relegation table, so the "bottom of the table" here is really a coach's win rate and a fanbase's mood. And I could be wrong, but the gap to "safety" in that sense has never been narrower. A single bad November tour used to get absorbed, now it trends and suddenly the review panel is meeting. Small sample though, any individual season, so I keep my own tables mostly to see the pattern over cycles rather than panic per match. The nuance I keep coming back to is that the pressure hasn't grown because players got weaker, it's grown because the evaluation window shrank. UnderdogNightmare is right that a fella used to get three or four seasons. Now the country decides inside two Tests whether someone's the problem. Which cornerstone goes first? Whichever one the selectors need to sacrifice to survive the news cycle, honestly.Numbers > vibes.
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eh, RobbedAgain wants evidence, fair enough, but my memory's evidence enough for me. back in the day a coach got a full cycle to build, now two ordinary Tests and the talkback lines are running hot. Danny's right that there's no relegation table in Test footy, the axe just falls quieter, in a review room instead of on a ladder. my verdict on the thread so far? the pressure's real and somebody prominent will get chewed before the season's done, that part I'd bet the house on. but which cornerstone goes down first, and whether the whole thing actually breaks? genuinely open, I've seen it all before and the sky never quite falls. ask me again after the next couple of Tests 😉Seen it all, lads.