During the 2021 Autumn Nations Series, New Zealand’s All Blacks suffered several losses. Most rugby nations would not be upset if they finished a season with twelve wins out of fifteen matches. However, All Blacks’ head coach Ian Foster went home to a storm of calls to be replaced. The All Blacks concluded their season with back-to-back losses to Ireland and France. With the addition of their 31-29 defeat at the hands of the world champions South Africa in October, many fans of the team have no more patience for any more All Blacks’ losses.
A local New Zealand newspaper The New Zealand Herald conducted a poll with more than 18,000 All Blacks fans, which showed that only 4.5% of the fans supported Coach Foster keeping his job. Callers to talkback radio shows lambasted both Ian Foster for his results and the New Zealand Rugby Board for extending Foster’s coaching contract. Even though the All Blacks lost abysmally to France with a score of 40-25, Foster insisted that his team was making progress. Though he did concede that perhaps the team ran out of juice at the end of a long campaign.
The All Blacks first loss to France since 1973, their highest number of defeats in a single season since 2009 and the team sitting at second in the world rankings are not welcoming statistics for All Blacks fans. Gregor Paul, an editor for Rugby World, wrote that the problem for the All Blacks now is that the world doesn’t fear them because the world doesn’t have to. However, the All Blacks’ culture means that the team does not indulge in self-pity with the experienced hooker Dane Coles saying that the team needed to do some good hard thinking over the summer break.
Source — Japan Times
Vocabulary List
suffered 苦しんだ
concluded 結論
back-to-back 連続
with the addition of ～を加える ことで
at the hands of の手で
lambasted こき下ろした
abysmally 極端な
concede 百歩譲る
ran out of juice 疲れる
campaign キャンペーン
defeats 敗戦
welcoming お迎え
statistics 統計
editor 編集者
self-pity 自己憐憫
Word Frequency
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