There was a match, and there was a moment. The All Blacks settled the match without argument, 54-0, a sixth straight win. The moment belonged to a 44-year-old who stepped forward alone to face the black line and return the haka he had performed himself a hundred and three times.
Fifty-four to nil
Dave Rennie’s All Blacks beat the Sharks 54-0 on Tuesday night at Kings Park, in their second outing of the tour. It was their sixth consecutive win, earned with a heavily rotated side, five days after a far more laboured 38-21 victory over the Stormers in Cape Town.
The margin needs some context: the Sharks were without their senior players on Springbok duty, notably Eben Etzebeth, Siya Kolisi and André Esterhuizen. They did not score a single point.
The move that summed up the evening came in the 63rd minute, just after Nonu came on. From a restart, Quinn Tupaea beat one defender with a sidestep, handed off the next and released Emoni Narawa, who found Caleb Clarke with a reverse flick pass. The Blues wing cut back inside and sent his scrum-half over the line. Straight off the whiteboard.
The haka answered
Before kick-off, Ruben Love had led the Ka Mate. Nonu, wearing 23 for the Sharks, then stepped forward alone to face the black line and launched into Kapa o Pango. Nobody saw it coming, including his own side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGdNbj6FNU
Ma’a Nonu’s response to the haka, filmed by the All Blacks.
He said no at first
The gesture almost did not happen. When he was asked the day before the match, Nonu initially turned it down. “It came in the moment. They asked me, we had talked about it the night before, and I sort of said no, because I didn’t want it to be about me,” he told Sky Sport NZ. “I was on the bench, with my history with that team, and I wanted it to stay about the All Blacks, the Sharks and this rivalry.”
It was the people around him in New Zealand who changed his mind. “I spoke to Tana Umaga and I asked Tamati Ellison for his blessing, out of respect, on behalf of our team, myself and my family. In the end I felt it was the right thing to do, to respond to the boys and to the All Blacks.”
Even his presence was a stopgap. He had joined the Sharks only a week earlier, on a short-term contract, and says he agreed because the club was short of bodies: “They needed help, they needed someone on the bench, it would have been rude to say no.” He came on for the last twenty minutes.
A hundred and three, exactly
The figure has always been quoted and it is correct: Ma’a Nonu won a hundred and three caps for New Zealand. The first on 13 June 2003, the last on 31 October 2015, in the World Cup final against Australia. In between, two world titles and thirteen seasons.
Ten years and nine months passed between that last cap and Tuesday’s match. Twenty-three years and two months between his first cap and this one. And this was no veteran coaxed out of retirement for the occasion: at 44, he was still playing competitive matches four months ago.
What lies ahead for the All Blacks
The tour continues on Saturday against the Bulls. Then come the four Tests against the Springboks, on 22 and 29 August and 5 and 12 September, with a match against the Lions slotted in between the third and fourth. That is where the true level of this New Zealand side will be measured, not against franchises stripped of their internationals.
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