Every great invasion in history had a logistics nightmare, and the All Blacks have just kicked off the greatest rivalry tour in rugby by turning theirs into a group-project travel itinerary that would make a budget airline weep. Because of conflict flaring in the Middle East, Dave Rennie couldn't just load 44 large men onto one plane and point it at Cape Town. No — the world's most feared rugby team had to be smuggled into South Africa in THREE separate batches, one routed through Hong Kong, one through Singapore, one through Perth, converging on the Mother City like a heist crew who agreed to meet at the safehouse but definitely did not share a WhatsApp location.
Arriving in dribs and drabs is a very humble way to start a war
There's something deeply funny about the All Blacks — the silver fern, the haka, the bogeymen of the southern hemisphere — trickling into arrivals in Cape Town three flights at a time, jet-lagged, blinking, wheeling their bags past a country that has been waiting THIRTY years to see them tour. You want to descend on South Africa like an army of black-clad destroyers; instead you land like a delayed connecting flight, one pod of players at a time, each group quietly praying its luggage took the same layover it did. And then, of course, they threw themselves a lovely welcome party at DHL Stadium on Friday, which is exactly what you do to reassure everyone you meant to arrive like that.
Meanwhile the captain is having a lie-down
And here's the plot twist South Africans are chuckling over: skipper Ardie Savea isn't even in the first three batches. He's been given an extended rest and only rocks up after the Sharks game, saving himself for the first Test at Ellis Park on the 22nd. So into the breach steps hooker Codie Taylor, handed the captain's armband for the provincial leg while the actual captain finishes his nap on the other side of the world. It's sensible workload management, sure — but it also means three South African franchises get to rough up a leaderless, jet-scrambled All Blacks side before the real skipper has laced a boot on the continent.
You could not script a stranger opening act
Think about the sheer chaos of the setup. Your squad arrives in three pieces via three different Asian and Australian airports. Your captain is asleep at home. Your first assignment is a hostile Cape Town crowd that's been marinating in anticipation since 1996. And waiting at the end of it all, refreshed and ranked number one, are the world-champion Springboks who have kindly used the same fortnight to fly to Argentina and stay match-sharp. If ever a tour needed to go smoothly from minute one, it's this one — and it opened with a boarding-pass jigsaw puzzle.
So welcome to South Africa, gentlemen, however many airports it took. Get the bags off the carousel, count the heads, wake the captain when he's good and ready. You've come an extraordinarily long and complicated way to be here, and the whole country respects the effort it took just to make the gate. Now find your legs, because the warm-up bouncers are waiting in Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria — and the main event at Ellis Park does not care one bit which continent you had your last layover on.