Hooked: Fozzie sends message
Dropping of Taylor should be stark warning from coach to old guard
With his coaching career on the line, All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has resisted the temptation to have a mad old spin of the selection wheel but made one small but significant change.
In what must rank as the biggest test of his tenure, given the uncertainty about his future and obvious need to deliver a victory or at least the sort of performance in defeat that doesn’t crush all hope of a revival, Foster has made his first hack into the old guard.
Codie Taylor, a long-server and first-choice hooker for much of the past five years, has been discarded from the match day 23.
A world-class performer at his best, Taylor paid the price for underwhelming efforts against Ireland.
He has gone because he didn’t play well enough, and in chopping Taylor, Foster has put the rest of his senior crew on notice that he’s now willing to wield the selection axe and not spare reputations.
So, too, has it now been signalled that the door is open to those who bang hard enough on it.
Samisoni Taukei’aho has been the single best find of the Foster era. He plays with boundless energy, and his low centre of gravity makes him a destructive ball carrier, where his ability to drive out metres after contact is the best in the county.
He is also a brilliant turnover exponent, and as much as Taylor played his way out, Taukei’aho forced his way in.
But has Foster waited too long before making his first transitional selection change and is he willing to keep making them?
It has felt that since the All Blacks lost to the Boks in early October and Ireland and France in November, there hasn’t been a willingness to address performance shortcomings with selection changes.
While there was an injection of uncapped players in 2020, there hasn’t been enough opportunity handed the next generation to put pressure on veterans such as Taylor, Dane Coles, Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Aaron Smith and Beauden Barrett.
This group have been superb for the All Blacks for many years but all are at the stage of their careers where it can’t be taken for granted that they will be first-choice players this time next year.
The next generation have been afforded limited opportunities to get on the field and up the pressure on the incumbents to prove their worth.
Dalton Papalii was probably the form openside in Super Rugby but he hasn’t made the starting 23 to play South Africa.
Tupou Vaa’i was one of the best locks in Super Rugby but he wasn’t promoted to the starting team in Dunedin when Whitelock was unavailable. And Fletcher Newell, who looked one of the best-equipped props in New Zealand throughout Super Rugby, has only just been called into the squad due to injury and is not on the bench.
A great deal of the success the All Blacks enjoyed between 2012 and 2015 was a result of coach Steve Hansen using new, young players to put pressure on a core of veterans to keep raising their standards.
No one in the older group was allowed to feel comfortable and that need to earn selection was a major driver of standards.
It’s never easy knowing when to drop an experienced and world-class player. The signs are difficult to read and the coach has to distinguish between a still great player having a bad game against someone who is unable to reach previous levels.
There’s an art to it, and coaches have to be wary about pulling the trigger on an old war horse too soon against allowing them to hang on for too long.
The way to avoid getting it wrong is to build an evidential basis by allowing the incumbent and aspiring newcomer adequate game time to state their case.
The Taylor versus Taukei’aho evidence is clear but the pressure needs to go on across the board.