All Blacks look to re-establish their playing identity in coming weeks

The next two weeks will be about the All Blacks trying to put one hand on the Rugby Championship trophy.

Two wins against Argentina and South Africa and they will be in control of the tournament, knowing that if they can follow that with a victory in Buenos Aires later this month, they will, other results depending, be in a commanding position to claim their fifth title in six years.

There’s a bit more to their thinking than that, though. This current All Blacks side need to further establish their playing identity.

The word they are using internally is re-establish: they feel they have to deliver more of the best parts of last year and build a rhythm and style that is unquestionably theirs.

What gets easily missed is the relative lack of leadership experience within the team. In the 2012-15 period, when Richie McCaw was captain, Kieran Read was his able and highly involved deputy. But the bulk of the wider leadership team of that period has moved on.

Dane Coles, Brodie Retallick and Sam Cane are the only surviving leaders of that previous era. The All Blacks coaches know their new leadership team needs more exposure to tough football.

They need game time together, need to be on the park, under pressure and forced to learn their craft the only way that works — by experience.

It was experience that built McCaw and the likes of Dan Carter, Keven Mealamu, Conrad Smith and Ma’a Nonu. That leadership group had to be developed, forced to endure adversity and learn from their mistakes.

By 2012, the

All Blacks had a hugely experienced group of leaders, which was largely why they could play so well for so long, but no one should forget life wasn’t always like that.

McCaw and his team made mistakes along the way. They lost games between 2008 and 2011 they probably should not have because their decisionmaking let them down and their composure under pressure wasn’t where it needed to be.

This current group of leaders are in that same early stage of their development. While the likes of Sam Whitelock, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith and Sonny Bill Williams have ample playing experience, they are new to the leadership business. So while there will be some temptation to change the make-up of the side to play Argentina this Saturday in New Plymouth, it’s unlikely it will be on a major scale. The All Blacks have made it clear they will approach this year slightly

differently — aware that in the last few years, they have come out of the Rugby Championship and run out of gas once they reached Europe.

They will look to actively manage workloads to prevent burnout as they come down the home straight and will strategise their selections with a deliberate plan.

But it is probable that they will begin that process of managing workloads at the end of the month when they have to play Argentina, South Africa and Australia away from home in a four-week blast.

There is plenty of rugby ahead in which they can have a proper look at the likes of Nathan Harris, Scott Barrett, Nehe Milner-Skudder, Ngane Laumape and Waisake Naholo.

These players will no doubt win ample game time, but this week and next, it is probable the plan will be to ask mostly the same players who were involved against Australia to build and adapt their game to take on Argentina and South Africa.

There will be some enforced change in the back three because of Ben Smith’s sabbatical, but that might simply see Israel Dagg start on the right wing, to play that same mentoring, steadying role as Smith, and guide Damian McKenzie and Rieko Ioane through the test.

Clearly Williams didn’t have a great test in Dunedin but he and Crotty would benefit from more time together in the midfield.

The Springboks are flying up the rankings by playing high quality rugby.

They have settled into a style that suits them and the All Blacks would be taking a huge risk to experiment with their selections this week, knowing they will be putting their strongest team on the park in Albany the following week.

Continuity would be the more sensible approach and the variation to their approach brought by a change of tactical application rather than a change of personnel.