The old switcheroo: Swapping roles has few red flags for ABs
History hasn’t always supported the merits of teams putting their best players on the park in any position just to have them involved.
Quite a few sides have gone splat when they threw the jerseys out the kit bag at their 15 best players and said not to worry too much about which number they ended up with on their back.
The All Blacks have had plenty of experience at seeing this concept go wrong and quite famously it has blown up at World Cups where they have felt the pressure to try to squeeze all of their best players into the starting team.
It went wrong in 1999 when four outside backs — Christian Cullen, Jeff Wilson, Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu — couldn’t fit into three positions so the former was asked to play at centre.
As a supremely talented footballer, Cullen, who had some experience in the role at school, made an incredible fist of what was an enormous ask but ultimately the balance wasn’t right within the team and a compromise selection robbed the All Blacks of the unpredictability they needed at fullback.
Strangely, in 2007, the All Blacks were driven into making much the same mistake when they couldn’t make peace with the fact that Leon MacDonald wouldn’t be on the field for the quarter-final against France if they picked Mils Muliaina at fullback.
So they shifted Muliaina to centre and while there were a thousand other things to blame for defeat, NRL legendary coach Wayne Bennett made the All Blacks coaching panel see the error of their selection ways a few years later when he colourfully suggested the squad’s best fullback should have played at fullback in the biggest game.
Specialist knowledge matters and as Bennett made clear, no matter how gifted certain players are, they can’t use that to overcome their lack of experience in a highly precise role.
So having learned the hard way that the best players concept is rife with danger, are the All Blacks potentially flirting with disaster if they try to make this work for them in Japan?
There is no sense yet they have committed fully to the twin playmaker plan of using Richie Mo’unga at first-five and Beauden Barrett at fullback nor is there anything but speculation at this stage that they will shift Kieran Read to blindside to accommodate Ardie Savea at No 8, although everyone is adamant this is what will be revealed today.
To some this will be cause for alarm — a sense of the All Blacks repeating a mistake which they should have learned from by now.
But, more convincing is the argument the All Blacks wouldn’t, in fact, be charging down the same old path of believing talent conquers all.
Barrett is hardly a stranger to the fullback role. He played there for the New Zealand Under-20 team in 2011.
His first test start in 2013 was at fullback and most of his caps between 2012 and 2015 came there where he would play off the bench.
Even in the last four years, when he has been the established starting No 10 for the All Blacks, he has spent the last quarter of most big games at fullback and if you added up all his test game time, he would have spent it about 50:50 between first-five and fullback.
He’s the best first-five in the country and probably the best fullback, too, although it would be a tight contest between him and Ben Smith. So there is no red flag.
Read has long been the All Blacks’ only specialist No 8, but while he’s made the position his own, it’s not where he started professional life.
He came into the Crusaders as a No 6 and it was in that role he was first capped against Scotland in 2008.
He had all the attributes to be a bruising, intimidating blindside and were it not for the fact that the All Blacks had another one of those developing in Jerome Kaino, this would have been Read’s future.
But when Rodney So’oialo hit some kind of invisible wall in 2009 and saw his form collapse, then All Blacks forward coach Steve Hansen felt Read had the athleticism to convert to No 8.
So Read could wear No 6 and largely play as a No 8 or even wear No 8 and largely play as a No 6.
The best players on the park concept hasn’t always worked but could this time as the associated risks are low to non-existent.
The All Blacks have had plenty of experience at seeing this concept go wrong and quite famously it has blown up at World Cups in 1999 and 2007.