All Blacks target Rugby Championship title with gas in tank for end-of-year tour to Europe, writes
Gregor Paul.
Obviously the All Blacks want to win the Rugby Championship. But they want to win it with their players still standing — with their squad still in good enough physical and mental shape to head off to Europe a few weeks later and not let their standards slip.
Continual improvement is what the All Blacks are about and in the four seasons they have tackled the extended Rugby Championship, they haven’t yet felt they have achieved that goal of playing the same high quality rugby in late November as they were in August.
It’s not difficult to know why: the Rugby Championship is extremely tough. It is six brutal tests in nine weeks, which come with a major travel factor. In itself, it is manageable.
The All Blacks have shown that. Since 2012, they have been able to sustain their form and quality from game one to game six.
But the hard part is finding the resolve to tackle what comes after that — a third Bledisloe encounter and an end-of-year tour to Europe.
That’s where they have come unstuck in the past. That’s where they have tended to stagnate or go backwards and been vulnerable.
Which is why it’s that second challenge of managing the squad through the Rugby Championship that has become the key to the All Blacks’ international season.
Last year, they smashed their way to the title, posting six victories, all of which were comprehensive.
But the price of that blitz was that by November, there were faultlines in the squad. There was a touch of physical fatigue in some legs but the greater impact was the mental tiredness that hung over them.
The extent of that was exposed by Ireland, who produced a superior tactical effort in Chicago. The Irish were quicker in everything they did, more urgent and aware, and following that defeat, the All Blacks had the look of a side that couldn’t wait for the season to end.
They managed to get past Italy, dig deep to subdue Ireland in Dublin and then scramble their way past France in the final test of the year. But their rugby looked tired and laboured by then, the continuity game not in view, the skills slightly off and the energy well down on where it had been throughout the Rugby Championship.
The question that the All Blacks coaches have been wrestling with is how do they avoid that late season crash? And while they haven’t revealed the answer, or maybe haven’t fixed on one yet, the hints have been strong enough that they may look to actively manage workloads and travel requirements during the Rugby Championship.
“Last year, I felt, actually we all did — the coaching and management group — that we were just hanging on,” says All Blacks coach Steve Hansen. “And a lot of that was because of the experience we had lost [in 2015]. If you look at it in a simple way, we lost four or five A-plus-plus guys after the World Cup. So our B-plus guys stepped up and that is not too big a jump. But you need your C guys to jump up to being B guys and that can be difficult.
“Our leaders shouldered a lot more responsibility than they normally would because we had Conrad [Smith], Ma’a [Nonu], Kevvy [Mealamu] on the off-field stuff in particular, Richie [McCaw] and Dan [Carter] not there.
“I think mentally, that was taxing. I think we will be in better shape because we have had 12 months of getting those new guys more confident and settled.
“The big banana skin is nine weeks, seven tests and round the world twice with 10 time changes.
“So if we are going to do anything, that is the area we have to be smarter. We have some ideas. How do we deal with the travel? How do we have some guys fresh? Can we do that by not making them go all the way around the world?”
What this may mean in practice is that the coaches use the first four tests of the Rugby Championship to cement the cohesion, flow and effectiveness of the team.
Those opening games will be about tightening the defence, sharpening the attack and being more clinical.
All those areas lapsed at times during the Lions series, particularly the quality of execution in attack. There won’t be any pressure applied to rebuild the structures or game plan — more a heavy emphasis on doing the basics better, faster and with more intensity.
It will be a period in which the leadership group will be asked to build on what they achieved last year and enhance the confidence and understanding of everyone involved.
That will be stage one. The last two games will be the time to do things differently with a relatively young and inexperienced squad possibly to be taken to Argentina for the away test against the Pumas.
Maybe that will be the game where we see the likes of Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Scott Barrett and Liam Squire start in the pack, with Lima Sopoaga, Anton Lienert-Brown, Rieko Ioane and Jordie Barrett forming a young backline.
While these emerging stars are in Argentina, hard-working older players such as Owen Franks, Jerome Kaino, Israel Dagg and Ryan Crotty might skip that leg and travel straight to South Africa for the next encounter.
Jordie Barrett and Ioane are already pushing hard for starting spots and with Kaino not sure how much he has left in the tank, Squire needs to be ready to assume the mantle of team enforcer.
The reality for the coaches is that they have been dealt a fixtures hand which requires them to take risks at some stage in the season. By playing a younger, inexperienced team in Argentina, they will be taking a risk but the reward will come when collectively there is more gas in the tank when they head to Europe.
The big banana skin is nine weeks, seven tests and round the world twice with 10 time changes.
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen