The All Blacks are peaking: shut!

It's a year out from the Rugby World Cup, and that means one thing: New Zealand will be playing like men possessed. It's around about this time in the cycle that beating New Zealand starts to look virtually impossible, and that's back where we are now. But the fear of the All Blacks peaking too early bedevils the New Zealand public, which is getting a trifle annoyed at the men in black's habit of dominating international rugby for long periods of time, but not being world champions.

The fact that the ABs have not lifted the Webb Ellis Cup since 1987 galls the denizens of the Inhabited Reef to the point of obsession. The fact that they have not made the Final since 1995 irritates them madly.

So now, the satisfaction of having comprehensively belted South Africa twice in consecutive weeks at home in a superb start to the 2010 TriNations competition will be tempered by that ever-present New Zealand fear of playing like this now - as they were in 2006 - only to go out of the World Cup a year later with barely a whimper.

Last time, the French came from behind to beat the All Blacks in a quarter-final. After that loss, New Zealand conducted a combination of the Spanish Inquisition and the Senate Watergate Committee Hearings, which surprised many by leaving Graham Henry in place as coach, the first time that an All Blacks coach had been reappointed after World Cup failure (if you want to fire up a Kiwi, ask for his or her opinion on that decision.)

But here we are, the opening rounds of the 2010 TriNations, and New Zealand is in spectacular form, riding a favourable draw - opening with two Tests at home to the Springboks - to a total of 63-29 in two victories, which have been mighty impressive.

For Australia, the delayed opening of the TriNations is a case of ‘do you want to good news or the bad news first?' The good news is that on Saturday night in Brisbane, a fresh Wallabies outfit faces a Springboks side that has been worked over physically by the All Blacks. The bad news is twofold: that the TriNations is close to over already in terms of a victor, and that South Africa (the reigning titleholder) will be desperate to salvage something from its 2010 Tasman Sea tour.

But really, the wounded wildebeest that is limping in to a waterhole in Brisbane this weekend should be put out of its misery - although a Wallaby is not exactly the kind of animal I was looking for to complete that analogy.

Tough week at training - yeah, we've heard it before

The massive supporter bases of Carlton and Essendon are very similar. Both dwell on past glories, both desperately ache for another premiership more to get one in front of the other than for any other reason, both detest each other, both barrack for the other against Collingwood. And both find themselves in a similar boat this week, following vapid performances at Etihad Stadium at the weekend (although Carlton fans' situation is not as dire, by virtue of it at least being in the eight.)

Strangely, the Churchillian rhetoric flying around from both clubs is exactly the same as it was the previous week, after similarly spiritless performances. After Carlton was belted by the Bulldogs in Round 15, Brett Ratten told his players to bring their mouthguards to training next week, vowing to rediscover a physical approach to the game. After the Bombers went through the motions against Melbourne in Round 15, Matthew Knights declared that he was relishing the situation, which was all going beautifully, apart from the win-loss ratio, and that the team would respond.

So both sets of supporters turned up on the weekend, to watch highly winnable games - in Essendon's case, against a team that had lost 26 of its last 28 games away from Perth - and both teams delivered: zippo.

Essendon at least led early, while Carlton was blown away from the opening bounce, but in both cases the games were painful to watch fro the faithful, because of an utter lack of fight. Neither was helped by the weirdness of Etihadball - a game that resembles Australian Rules, but in which both teams take it in turns to try to move the ball around the sides of the field and kick a goal, with no interference allowed from the opposition during the other team's turn. (Not all tenants of Etihad play this new sport, it must be said, but some do.)

Both sets of supporters, probably counting for about 33 per cent of AFL followers around the nation, would have expected their teams to come out on the weekend breathing fire, or to give that cliché its real description, doing all of the hard physical things that win the ball or get it back, the relentless run that creates options in attack and closes them down in defence, the sheer hard work that indicates a team is trying to win the game. Instead, they got....zilch.

I don't mean to ignore the efforts of Sydney and West Coast - the Swans were sublime and ruthless in the way they went about dismantling Carlton, while West Coast turned its own poor season around by rediscovering the elixir of just reward-for-effort (as well as having the benefit of a career day-out from a superbly skilled footballer in Mark Le Cras) - it is just that their good play is not the story. Essendon and Carlton were deplorable, again, and their supporters will not enjoy this week's diet of witch-hunts and defiant rhetoric. Although I would swap Carlton's tenuous position in the eight for Essendon's soft-as-butter culture any day.

Peter Who?

There would be plenty of Australian cricket followers who would be reading that a person called Peter George is in line for a Test debut at Headingley this week. I think that's more a reflection on the general disinterest in Sheffield Shield, because George is a very good prospect, with all the right credentials.

Like New South Wales' Josh Hazlewood, who was involved in the ODI part of the tour earlier, South Australia's George is out of the Glenn McGrath mould, in height, pace, action and - we hope - ability to put the ball consistently in the corridor of uncertainty. (With Ben Hilfenhaus unlikely to play through injury, and Mitchell Johnson's decision to flick the switch back to the ouija board method of bowling - the unguided missile, random-motion electrons he was letting loose in the second innings at Lord's - such an ability becomes a highly prized asset.)

Still not 24, George is more than worth a look at this level. I thought Johnson was back to his best in the first innings at Lord's, but his second was a reprise of the dross-filled ordeal that was a major contributor to the loss of the Ashes last year. George had a good Sheffield Shield campaign last season, with 36 wickets at 30.44 from ten games, and his (and Hazlewood's) selection on the tour shows what the selectors are thinking in terms of the attributes that they want our attack to have heading into the Ashes (and it's not unguided missiles, I hope.) So blood him now, and good luck to him.

Afridi votes with his feet

Shahid Afridi's astonishing retirement from Test Cricket is a big worry: at 31, the gifted slugger and part-time spinner effectively admitted that he doesn't like the five-day code and is temperamentally not suited to it. To us in this country that is an appalling admission, because we still regard Test Cricket as the ultimate, well, test of a player's ability.

But I think there would be a few players throughout the world who would agree with Afridi. Chris Gayle, for one, looks bored by Tests, once he's out. These two are Test Captains whose disdain for the format is evident. More than anything else, this shows that the T20 generation is on the rise. If you looked honestly at Test Cricket, you would have to say that only Australia, England, South Africa and to a lesser extent New Zealand - and maybe Sri Lanka - look like they want to play it. I'm sure that Pakistan coach Waqar Younis still regards Tests as the highest level of the game, and it did look at Lord's as though most of his team - particularly his bowling unit - agrees, but the shortening attention span of the game's demographic heart on the sub-Continent looks as through it will continue to undermine Test Cricket.

It can't help that regularly, Tests in that part of the world degenerate into one-and-a-half innings of run amassment exercises that bore everyone to death. We all know that when a Test develops into the kind of beautifully poised run-chase that ODIs and T20 were invented to try to simulate, there is simply nothing like it - but not always. Nor will the short formats ever generate the gripping beauty of a desperate match-saving stand such as Cardiff 2009.

The tragedy of Afridi is that I have often used the example of one of his (successful) blistering assaults in a Test against India, in a game that was meandering to a draw, when all of a sudden Pakistan was able to set India a target: Afridi on that occasion created not only a lead but time for his team - and I think that Test Cricket is the only sport in the world where this can be done.

What can the ICC do? They have to think in terms of a Test championship, running over a two or four-year cycle, with meaningful prizes, with a constant ladder in operation, and something riding on every game. They somehow have to ensure that Tests don't get played on dead, baking asphalt strips on the sub-continent (in empty stadiums, because of ridiculous five-day ticket purchases only.)

At the moment, Test Cricket only means something to half of the teams that play it. It's got to be made as important for every international cricketer as it clearly was to Tim Paine and Stephen Smith last week.

Get well Goober!

It was a shock to all who know Geelong club doctor Geoff Allen that he could go down with a heart attack, as he did during the warm-up at AAMI Stadium on Friday night: the 48-year-old Allen is a fitness fanatic, all-round sportsman, my-body-is-a-temple kind of fellow that you would not think a candidate for such a thing at this age.

"Goober" played two reserves Grand Finals with the Cats when we were at Melbourne University, and then played with Werribee in the VFA before joining University Blues in the VAFA, where he was a major contributor to Blues' re-accession to A Grade in 1994, and subsequent status as perennial contender. Goober just loves football madly, and it was no surprise that he parlayed his involvement as Geelong radio station K-Rock FM's boundary rider/medical reporter on the Cats into a gig as the club's number two doctor.

It is a joke among his friends that when a Cat is leaving the field with blood seeping out of his head, and there is great concern in the box and on the bench, as Goober jumps up with his rubber gloves on and his suturing kit at the ready, he is struggling to keep an ear-to-ear grin from his face because he just loves being so closely involved with his beloved Cats. When a Geelong player goes down, he is like a setter in a room where a human is giving the slightest indication of preparing to go outside for a walk.

But he is a consummate professional, shown no better than by the hug Matthew Stokes gave him after the 2007 Grand Final: it was Goober's work on Stokes' dislocated kneecap, suffered in the first quarter, that got the Cats forward - who looked finished for the day - back on to the ground. So best wishes to Geoff and Claudia and the kids, and hope to see you bounding up off that Geelong bench again soon, Goober - with that big grin kept well under wraps.