Looking back to 2012, one of the keys to the All Blacks success has been the importance they have placed on developing leadership.
When the All Blacks lost 800-plus test caps after the 2015 World Cup, they were potentially facing a leadership vacuum. But some astute planning ensured they had good decision-makers and deep thinkers ready to step in.
Everyone could see the
All Blacks were going to hit the wall at the end of 2015. They were going to lose arguably the two greatest players in All Blacks history – Richie McCaw and Daniel Carter.
Those two were retiring from test rugby as were four other legends of the game – Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Tony Woodcock and Keven Mealamu.
They were known collectively as the 'Golden Generation', all of them had been great All Blacks, having done great things.
All of them had been heavily involved in delivering the most successful decade of results which saw the All Blacks win 90 per cent of their tests between 2008 and 2015.
All of them would be in the frame to be considered the best in their respective positions – not just best All Blacks, but best the world had known.
Certainly McCaw and Carter would make any all time greatest player XV and Nonu and Smith would be in the frame.
Between them they had in excess of 800 caps – five of them were centurions and Smith signed off with 94 appearances.
And it was the experience and leadership brought by those players that All Blacks coach Steve Hansen was fearful of losing.
Hansen had come to realise in his long exposure to international rugby that leadership was so often the difference between the best teams. There was never much between the best sides physically and what tended to separate them was their ability to make good decisions under pressure.
Leadership was a quality Hansen considered invaluable. He didn't see it as something that would organically develop or a skill players would necessarily learn unconsciously. He saw it as something that firstly had to be recognised as being a skill in itself and secondly something that had to be deliberately and relentlessly managed, learned and developed.
It's not something to which there will be an answer, but would McCaw have become the leader he was under a different All Blacks coach? That same question could be asked of all those who developed into such strong characters between 2012 and 2015.
Hansen put a heavy emphasis on decision-making and the art of doing it under pressure and it paid off.
That was the key to winning so often – being able to keep calm heads, make the right calls and execute accurately.
The Golden Generation were brilliant
players too, but there were brilliant players also coming through.
Sam Cane had been groomed since 2012 to take over at openside. Beauden Barrett and Aaron Cruden were vying to be Carter's replacement at No 10 and the latter had close to 50 test caps already.
In the midfield there were ample options – Ryan Crotty, Malakai Fekitoa and Sonny Bill Williams having all played test football.
Dane Coles was already starting ahead of Keven Mealamu and had been for the last two years while Joe Moody was emerging as a quality loose-head to replace Woodcock.
The All Blacks could replace what they were losing in one aspect, but not all. Experience can't be fast-tracked. Leadership has to be learned through trial and error.
While the All Blacks had given some of their younger players a seat in the leadership group between 2012 and 2015, the team had effectively been run by McCaw and a senior cabal that included Carter and Smith.
Leadership was one of the most under-rated strengths of the All Blacks in 2015. By then they had such deep knowledge of what they were trying to do and how they would do it.
McCaw was imperious as captain. He'd played in excess of 140 tests and been around since 2001 having experienced almost everything test football could throw at him.
He'd worked tirelessly on his decisionmaking, his communication and game understanding and became, arguably, the strongest, most astute and effective captain the game has ever known.
In Carter he had one of the greatest game managers the game had ever known. He had incredible vision and understanding and a temperament that never wobbled.
In the final three games of the 2015 World Cup Carter was in total control – his tactical reading was perfect and his decision-making critical in bringing victory.
Smith was the man who could not be flustered. He was the rock in the All Blacks midfield effortlessly making the right call time after time and keeping all those around him calm.
The quality of that group gave the All Blacks a unique insight into the depth of commitment required both physically and mentally to sustain success.
Good decision-making became almost automatic in the four years between 2012 and 2015 and the team functioned more smoothly and effectively than it did at any other period of the professional age.
The All Blacks didn't once crack psychologically. Even when they didn't play well, they found a way to hang in and sneak home - becoming the masters of the late escape. It made them formidable.
Individual and collective leadership was the bedrock of the All Blacks' recent
success and replacing that was the highest priority for Hansen.
To lose so much rugby knowledge was going to be tough, potentially devastating which was why Hansen began planning the transition early.
It could be said that Hansen began planning the 2016 leadership of the All Blacks as early as 2012. That was when the process of grooming Kieran Read to take over as captain first began.
Read, Hansen decided, was the obvious choice to take over from McCaw. He was a natural leader, comfortable with who he was and a world class player, who would have close to 100 caps and be just 30 at the start of 2016.
Read was respected, disciplined, tough and inclusive and had all the qualities Hansen was looking for.
He was asked to captain the team against Italy in 2012 and then again in June 2013 when McCaw was on sabbatical.
By the end of 2015 Read had captained the All Blacks in nine tests, which was a reasonable base from which he could become the permanent captain.
And that was one of the questions Hansen decided to answer early in 2016. Read was almost certainly going to be the man appointed to take over from McCaw, but when announce that?
Should Hansen wait until the end of Super Rugby, effectively keeping the door open to change his mind and keep Read uncertain. Or should he commit to Read early, let the world know it was happening and bring certainty and stability to the All Blacks set-up?
He chose the latter, deciding in
February 2016 to confirm what everyone already knew.
“Reado’s had experience already as captain nine times and whilst it will be a new experience to be there full-time, at least he’s had a taste of it.
“They [McCaw et al] have that sense of belief, and that’s the thing that Reado when he comes in as skipper will have to exude — that self-confidence under pressure.”
It wasn't just Read, however, who had been groomed to step up. The likes of Cruden, Cane, Ben Smith and Brodie Retallick were put in the All Blacks' 10-strong leadership group in 2013.
Hansen wanted for there to be more than just Read with leadership experience. He wanted, best he could, to have a core group of young players in 2016 who had experience at leading the team in some capacity.
Cane, for instance, was asked to captain the All Blacks against Namibia at the 2015 World Cup. It was a big ask for a young player, but it was a decision that reflected not only the respect in which he was held, but also the senior role he would be playing after the tournament.
But Hansen needed to take it to the next level as it were. It was helpful that Read
had moderate experience as captain.
It was helpful that a handful of players had been part of the leadership team already. But there were still going to be major gaps in knowledge and experience when the team assembled for the June tests in 2016.
They were still going to be coming into battle without the old guard who had been so influential for so long.
There would be just one week between the Super Rugby final and the first test against Wales and so Hansen knew time was short and the challenge significant so he moved early on all matters leadership.
Not only was Read announced as captain but the likes of Sam Whitelock, Jerome Kaino, Coles, Aaron Smith and Sonny Bill Williams were promoted to the leadership group in March.
And they would regularly meet between Super Rugby commitments to plan out the season and learn more about what would be expected of them.
They established early that 2016 was not going to be considered a rebuilding year. The All Blacks, Hansen made clear, were not going back to square one.
That would be hampering them with an expectation that they were vulnerable or hadn't prepared at all for what they knew was coming.
So the view from within was that 2016 was a year of re-establishment. It was a year for the All Blacks to show the world that it was business as usual and the departure of the golden generation would not derail them.
Hansen would make sure in his media commitments to say repeatedly: “This is our time,” and it was all designed to boost the confidence of the new leadership group and let them know the depth of faith the coaching team had in them.
“Our mindset is not one of re-building, but re-establishing; moving to a higher level,” Hansen said when he unveiled the first squad of the year. “That's our challenge - to take this team to a higher level from where we left after the Rugby World Cup.
“We've spent a month working with the leadership because that's the area where we really want to up the ante in.”
Moving early to plug the leadership vacuum brought spectacular benefits for the All Blacks. They met Wales in June and blew them away in three tests. The final one in Dunedin gave an indication of just why Hansen refused to see 2016 as a rebuilding year.
His young and relatively inexperienced All Blacks side played tactically smart and mature rugby that had an unexpectedly potent attacking thrust behind it.
The picture didn't change at all during the Rugby Championship. In fact, the All Blacks just got better and better.
They drilled the Wallabies in quick succession, easily put Argentina away and then destroyed the Boks in Christchurch.
Even more impressive was the way they went to the Republic a couple of weeks later and smashed South Africa 57-15.
The All Blacks were rampant. They secured a Grand Slam and a big part of that was due to their calmness and awareness on the field.
They lacked the caps of the previous team but their decision-making was almost as good and they had that same inner belief and calm.
The decision to work hard on the leadership paid off. To actively try to accelerate the learning of the next generation had been a smart move.
“Our great players cast a big shadow but once they go everyone else says 'it's my turn',” Hansen said, at the end of the Rugby Championship.
“There's a lot of improvement because they've just come together, We've definitely improved our leadership. This young group have really taken the bull by the horns in this area and are operating as a collective unit with a lot of flexible thinking.
“When you don't get what you want in life as well as sport you can tend to get frustrated. Until you're put under that type of frustration you don't know how you're going to cope with it.
“There doesn't appear to be complacency and the guys are living and driving the standards we aspire to both on and off the park. We're not the finished product. The more experience this group gets the better they're going to be.”
And that last point certainly proved to be right. Read grew in stature and authority throughout the World Cup cycle.
He became a giant figure within the team – ending his tenure as the second most experienced captain in All Blacks history having led the side 53 times.
Whitelock took giant leaps as a leader. He captained the Crusaders to three consecutive Super Rugby titles and also led the All Blacks in a test against Wales, three against France and one in Argentina when Read was injured.
Cane also had another taste of the captaincy – against Argentina in 2019 – and his standing in the group was obvious.
Retallick co-captained the Chiefs with Cane and became a better decision-maker and overall strategist as a result and Coles led the
Hurricanes to the Super Rugby title in 2016 and was never afraid to speak his mind.
Ben Smith kept a firm hand on the Highlanders and always had sage advice to offer inside the All Blacks and his Super Rugby team-mate Aaron Smith also matured to the point of being a calm head and trusted voice.
The All Blacks continued to make good decisions under pressure.
Despite being young and with less collective experience, the All Blacks rarely wobbled.
They were still a tough nut to crack. They didn't go missing. They didn't start doing wild things under pressure and when it really mattered, they were still able, as they had under McCaw, to stay calm and make the right plays.
The All Blacks may have lost 800 test caps and years of test experience when the golden generation retired after the World Cup, but thanks to some astute planning and hard work, they didn't see a collapse in their leadership.