Smarts, not smash, the key to an All Blacks victory tomorrow
Travesty of strategic thinking and tactical application in their last two losses
It’s brain not so much brawn that All Blacks coach Ian Foster is hoping to see more of from his team tomorrow. In the wake of a second consecutive loss — another in which the All Blacks were second best in the physical exchanges — there will be an obvious temptation to believe that the key to victory lies with adopting a muscular and direct approach.
Test rugby is often eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and beaten up two weeks ago by the Pumas, there’s an expectation — almost a compulsory demand — that the All Blacks return with a belligerence and ferocity that rights that wrong.
But, despite it how it looked, the All Blacks’ wounds were not inflicted so much by being timid, but by being blind. They weren’t crushed on the gainline because they weren’t running hard enough, it was because they were running into the wrong places.
They were beaten not because they weren’t tough enough, but because they weren’t smart enough and while there is no doubt they would benefit from upping their physical intensity and being more confrontational in the collisions and controlled in their set-piece, the bigger gains are likely to come by being more astute in their decisionmaking.
What was at the core of the All Blacks’ failure in both Brisbane and West Sydney was a travesty of strategic thinking and tactical application.
The ill-discipline, dumb penalties and relative lack of accuracy they could have survived, if they had managed to produce just a semblance of awareness and control when they had half-opportunities on attack.
And this is clearly a point Foster has been making to his players for the last two weeks. There’s a hard to avoid assumption that after two fairly insipid performances, the review process saw Foster fall into Hollywood movie mode, bang his fist on the desk and demand a thunderous awakening. But it would be wrong. The review was cold, practical and focused on the multiple occasions when players took the wrong option: made the wrong play and ran their team into trouble.
Coming out all blood and snotters this week won’t fix the issues. What will is a calm and measured approach where the basics are improved and the key decision-makers are more aware of where and how the attack should be operating.
There’s been a fairly strong message, too, that one of those tactical failures was the All Blacks’ kicking game. Too much ball was kicked from the backfield and kicked badly, while not enough was kicked by the frontline to turn the Pumas and check their defensive line speed.
If the All Blacks’ best performances of the last decade are analysed they would reveal the common denominator is excellent kicking.
It’s the great myth that the All Blacks only do pass and catch because their whole attack game is built on the breadth of their repertoire and so much of the space they exploit and the pressure they exert comes from supremely good tactical kicking.
The balance was all wrong against the Pumas and will remain all wrong if the All Blacks simply get emotional and think being relentlessly physical will win them the test.
They have made this mistake before — albeit they managed to win — when they responded to their first defeat to Ireland in 2016 by being insanely physical two weeks later when they met them again in Dublin.
It remains, probably, the most brutal test of the professional era and one which left the Irish nursing a few grievances such were the nature and volume of the physical exchanges.
The only thing that left a grievance with the All Blacks was the blinkered nature of their performance. They had felt the pressure of the historic loss in Chicago and failed to trust the full range of their skills in Dublin.
Instead of trying to play their way into holes and pass, catch, kick and run, the All Blacks became narrow and one-dimensional, believing they could smack Ireland off their feet and bludgeon them into submission.
It did work in the end but the killer blow came not through an act of brawn but by an incredible passing exchange that led to Malakai Fekitoa putting the visitors out of touch.
And that’s what Foster is hoping his team will remember this weekend — that no matter how much brawn they take to the contest, it will be worthless without brain.