Australia’s national rugby team, the Wallabies, are tonight poised to complete another in a series of long-standing self-sacrifice show matches to help out New Zealanders by giving them a reason to believe in something.
The ritual, formally known as the Bledisloe Cup, was established by Australia as a form of investment in New Zealand, underpinned by a belief that while things in Aotearoa may be entirely hopeless, there’s still value in giving the small island nation a reason to smile.
“It always feels like a really good thing to do,” said Les Kiss, head coach of the Wallabies. “It’s tough, and it can be tough to go to New Zealand sometimes, visit these places, and see awful stuff like that, but you leave feeling like you’ve really made a difference. You’ve really lifted the spirits of some of these poor, poor people.”
Kiss said that the Wallabies always aimed to put on a real spectacle that you could “almost believe was the real thing.”
“Our aim, when we go out there, is not just to lose the game, but the aim is to really, really show off some great rugby, and make it actually as tense as it can be,” he said. “We want people to get lost in it, to really trigger their imaginations. We want for people to watch this and say to themselves, ‘wow, this really looks real.’”
All Blacks coach Dave Rennie said the Wallabies were “top class performers”, comparing them to the Washington Generals, long-time villains of the Harlem Globetrotters.
“You really get that vibe from it,” he said, beaming. “Especially for the kids. It’s really, at the end of the day, for the kids, to make them believe New Zealand really can do something on the world stage.”
He said that a huge part of the spectacle was the “tricks and stunts” you get to perform.
“As a team, we get to do things that you’d obviously never be allowed to do in real rugby, you know, to just be able to get away with that sort of thing and really run up these huge, unrealistic scores.
“It’s a lot of fun.”
In a first, the TAB is taking bets on tonight’s show match, promising that all money put on the Wallabies will be donated to charity.