Retallick to miss test against Boks
Mediocre display after good start
All Blacks lock Brodie Retallick will miss the final Rugby Championship clash against South Africa on Sunday after his wife, Niki, suffered a pregnancy loss, the team said yesterday.
Retallick was one of six players who did not travel to Buenos Aires for the clash with Argentina, which they won 36-10, and were scheduled to go directly to South Africa.
The other players – Sam Cane, Sam Whitelock, Liam Squire, Lima Sopoaga and Ryan Crotty — had all arrived in South Africa, while Retallick stayed in New Zealand.
‘‘Brodie and his wife Niki have lost their baby boy prematurely, which is incredibly sad news,’’ coach Steve Hansen said.
‘‘As a result, Brodie will stay home with Niki and rejoin the team when the time is right.
‘‘We’re really feeling for them at this sad time and our thoughts are with them and their families.’’
Hansen said Vaea Fifita, Ngani Laumape, Waisake Naholo, Luke Romano and Ardie Savea would return home from Argentina.
The All Blacks had wrapped up the Rugby Championship before their win over the Pumas after South Africa and Australia drew 27-27 earlier yesterday.
One after the other they wandered out.
Steve Hansen, Ian Foster and Kieran Read first, followed by Wyatt Crockett, Damian McKenzie, Scott Barrett and David Havili.
The last of them - All Black No1161 - had a try on test debut to talk about. For the rest of New Zealand’s playing or coaching contingent, the task was explaining a fairly mediocre 36-10 win over Argentina in Buenos Aires.
Up 29-3 at halftime, the All Blacks had appeared poised to go and do to the Pumas what they’d done to South Africa two weeks prior. But instead of putting 50 on Argentina, New Zealand struggled to do much at all during a rather unedifying final 40 minutes.
Yellow cards to flanker Matt Todd and No 8 Read, either side of halftime, didn’t aid the All Blacks’ cause, but doesn’t excuse how untidy their rugby became. Everyone had a theory, but it was probably Scott Barrett who best summed the second-half struggles.
‘‘A lack of flow, interruptions in play, those cards,’’ Barrett said of the things that frustrated the team most.
‘‘The Pumas lifted and they disrupted us around the breakdown especially, trying to hold us up and [Agustin] Creevy [was good] over the ball. Our breakdown [work] wasn’t quite there and TJ and Aaron [halfbacks TJ Perenara and Aaron Smith] were having a bit of a tough day.’’
Having played with great cohesion in the first half, the All Blacks could barely string three passes together in the second.
Read (twice), McKenzie and Waisake Naholo were the first-half tryscorers, before Havili dived over late on. It was one of the few things the team constructed to a worthwhile conclusion, after going away from the basics. ‘‘We just needed something simple to go to and it was a wee bit frustrating that we just couldn’t get that momentum,’’ said Scott Barrett
Those were sentiments backed up by Read.
‘‘When we do things simple and back our ability to catch, pass and run pretty square, then generally it comes off pretty well for us,’’ Read said.
Second five-eighth Sonny Bill Williams did that well early on, allowing flair players such as McKenzie and Beauden Barrett to play off the back of it. The pair either took gaps themselves or threw the pass that put a teammate through.
Quite why it was so hard for the All Blacks to return to that method is anyone’s guess and, in the end, the coaching staff were just happy the players won.
‘‘We’ll grow from that last 40 minutes and we’ll learn a lot about ourselves, which is a positive,’’ head coach Steve Hansen said.
He was the first to say that the back-end of the match hadn’t been impressive. But he was determined to talk about how good it was for the team to be without Read and Todd, or those - such as Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick and Sam Cane - who weren’t selected for this trip.
‘‘People like Scott Barrett, I thought Luke Romano probably had his best game in the jersey. They really stepped up and did well, so it was fantastic,’’ said Hansen.
Even if fantastic might to be the word too many fans would use to describe the match. Frustrating probably being more applicable.
Still, the All Blacks won, claimed The Rugby Championship title in the process and now look to finish this competition with a win over the Springboks in Cape Town next weekend.