D'Arcy Waldegrave: This is not the All Blacks of days gone by - The All Sport Breakfast

Tomorrow morning the All Black 2025 season will be extinguished.  

Although that is a generous term as the season hardly caught fire. From time to time there was a spark that threatened to ignite the team, bringing forth hell fire, engulfing the opposition, sucking their oxygen, charring them beyond recognition, blazing a trail to victory. But not this year. Nor last year.  

Any sniff of their former fire starter glory was a smoky nostril tease, a hint of the scorched earth policy the team once dispensed with impunity.  

Not anymore. 

This is not the team of days gone by. This is not the team standing on the shoulders of the giants of All Black teams of old. The teams that built the legend of New Zealand rugby. 

Don’t get me wrong, they are not a poor team. At times they poke their head out of the mire of mediocrity they’ve found themselves in and give us a taste of days gone by, but for the most part, they’re a team that is capable of great moments, but incapable of piecing these moments together for a display of consistent dominance. 

There is nothing that Sunday mornings selection can do to change the course of this distressing narrative. 

Thrash Wales? Sure, but it’s only Wales. 

Show a defined turnaround from the piecemeal offerings to date? The player make up is so different from the team that wilted in the face of England, we’ll be none the wiser as to the development of the group as a whole. 

The most depressing part of this slow collapse of the AB dynasty is the resignation of the fanbase that this is as good as gets. 

The fire that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, but the All Blacks did burn so very, very brightly. 

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