ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Sport
HARSH REALITY
Hamilton man Chris Grimes, 36, is today reflecting on a simpler era of New Zealand rugby dominance, following the All Blacks’ 29-23 loss to Argentina in the second Rugby Championship test.
Growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Grimes says he can barely remember a time when anyone outside Australia or South Africa posed a genuine threat.
“Back then, you could basically chalk up 60 point wins against the likes of Argentina and Ireland,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Now I’ve got to watch us get outmuscled by a team we used to beat by 50, and half the crowd just shrugs like it’s normal.”
Grimes noted that, as a child growing up in New Zealand, he used to treat a rare loss to the Wallabies or Springboks as a national emergency.
“Like, that was proper front-page news, eh? You’d see headlines screaming about a ‘crisis’ in New Zealand rugby. But even then, it was just Australia or South Africa. The times of George Gregan for the Wallabies and Percy Montgomery for the Springboks. That was it. You didn’t even bother worrying about the Northern Hemisphere teams. But Argentina? Please. They were basically a warm-up game a few years ago.”
Now, with Los Pumas claiming only their fourth win ever over the All Blacks, Grimes says he feels unmoored, like the natural order of things has been flipped upside down.
“Imagine telling me as a 10-year-old that Argentina would beat us multiple times in my lifetime. And don’t even get me started on the idea of Italy or Fiji knocking us over one day. That’d have been pure science fiction.”
Despite the heartbreak, Grimes admitted there’s a small part of him that enjoys the nostalgia.
“I miss those days when you’d go into every game with the smug confidence that we’d win. It wasn’t even arrogance, it was just the truth. Now? I sit there praying we don’t lose to some so-called minnow. It’s humbling, but man, it’s depressing too.”
At press time, Grimes was seen digging through an old VHS collection of All Blacks victories, muttering something about how “Christian Cullen never would’ve let this happen.”
More to come.
