Justin Marshall: ‘All Blacks cannot bring back the damage to the jersey in Wellington’
All Blacks line up for the anthem in Wellington and former scrum-half Justin Marshall.
Justin Marshall says that the All Blacks’ dominant victory over Argentina does not absolve the players and coaches who were part of the shock defeat a week earlier.
New Zealand suffered their first loss during the Scott Robertson era when they went down 38-30 to Los Pumas in Wellington.
They followed that up with their best performance under the new head coach so far, thrashing the same opponents 42-10, but Marshall felt that the “damage” had already been done.
The All Blacks remain in the Rugby Championship title hunt ahead of their huge games against the Springboks, but the great scrum-half believes that the result at Sky Stadium will haunt them for the rest of the campaign even if they claim wins in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
‘Got to live with that’
“We should have [beaten them twice]. I said last week that what we can’t do is bring the past back. We cannot bring back the damage to the jersey in Wellington that Argentina inflicted on us,” Marshall told The Platform.
“The fact that they were saying: ‘Hey, the good thing about rugby is that we’ve got another week’, that’s not relevant. What was relevant was the now, and they failed in the now.
“There was no doubt that there was going to be a response, but there shouldn’t be that necessity. There shouldn’t be, ‘Oh, we can put it right next week.’
“A week before was the important week and if you drop the ball then you’ve got to live with that. Unfortunately, that loss is going to hurt them as a team this year.”
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The All Blacks had a solid start under Robertson, beating England both times in a two-Test series and overcoming Fiji, but it all went wrong against Argentina.
It has put them on the back foot in the Rugby Championship ahead of their tournament-defining encounters with the Springboks.
New Zealand will likely have to emerge triumphant twice over Rassie Erasmus’ men if they are to retain the title they have won for the past four years.
And while Marshall is still seething over their performance and result in Wellington, the former half-back hopes that the result can be ‘put in perspective’ over the course of the season.
Tough games coming up
“It is a team they should be able to beat because they showed how they can do that with the right attitude at Eden Park,” he said.
“But when it comes to correlating the wins and losses ratio at the end of the year on a very tough Test calendar – 15 matches and five of them against the top five teams in the world – that one’s going to hurt them because it’s one they should have banked.
“It’s great that we turned it around but, yes, it should have been 2-0 and they have to live with the fact that that’s not the case anymore.
“But in that lies an opportunity, ambition, desire and the chance to go out and put that loss into perspective by beating teams that are better than Argentina.”
