This All Black team is full of Chiefs who haven't won anything

This entire article is full of journalist’s opinion who hasn’t won anything.

Sitting in the Yokohama stands watching the ABs get hammered by England in the W Cup semifinal was not much fun. The Crusaders, who had won a zillion Super titles, had 9 starters. So much for the theory that Super winners make Test winners!

And noe the ABs have won nothing aswell with 2many chiefs plus 2 past chief coach’s, abit like the crusaders when razor was coach ,one eyed coaching loss games ,just as have been proved again .ç

Fantastic comment bait to say we don’t have a dominant team. We all saw the super rugby final.

I like Jacobson. But if he’s the VC we are in trouble. Once Ardie went off, with no C Taylor, we needed to put Jordie in charge. If only we had another 7 in NZ who’s a leader of a dominant super rugby team, athletic and physical

Also - best front row ball skills on the weekend was big OX!!

NZ certainly has more upside than this Bok team which is aging and currently at their max peak. The All Blacks have already improved dramatically within 3 months under Rennie, and will continue to. Improve their scrum, lineout and garryowens and they will be infinitely stronger.

What both SA and NZ tend to do is just think about themselves and each other, only. But France potential is crazy high. They have the right blend of size, age and experience to conquer both NZ and SA in 14mths time. Ignore their recent results and form, that squad is packed with absolute beasts and in Jalibert and Romas, have the best 10 and 15 on the planet. Ntamack on the bench. Dupont pulling the strings. Backing up is Frances only problem, the ‘top 2 inches’ which is not the problem for SA and NZ, they have proved that time and again. But with the RWC 2027 draw already cancelling out 1 of them for the Semis, the stage is surely set for France to get closer than ever.

Pure rage bait with a complete and utter logic fail. I’m still waiting to see how the Hurricanes Poua went “woke and broke” a few years ago, Mr. Bidwell, despite having one of their best seasons ever.

Just another trashy biased article against the most hated team in NZ.

The Hurricanes didn’t win anything for decades when the All Blacks were consistently made up of legendary Canes players:

Christian Cullen

Ma’a Nonu

Tana Umaga

Rodney So’oialo

Jerry Collins

Conrad Smith

Cory Jane

Piri Weepu

Alama Ieremia

Norm Hewitt

Andrew Hore

Chris Masoe

Jason Eaton

Neemia Tialata

The Hurricanes failed for years and still provided the All Blacks with a lot of success. Remember the Fog Final? Or how about that failed 2015 final?

Work this one out Mr. Bidwell: How come the best player in the Super Rugby final this year missed so many kickable penalties and failed to make any significant impact in tests 2 and 3 of this RGR series? Where was that Super Rugby dominance by Love in any of the games so far? He has been average at best. And which team does he represent?

We’ve had a 3 player spine combination from the Canes in Roigard, Love and Jordie and we still lost 2 games in a row. Add in Lomax who has been extremely disappointing and it is quite the logic fail.

The only Chiefs player who has been disappointing was Leroy Carter with his bad tackling, but he has contributed positively with his tries and try assists. Jacobson, Tupaea, Sititi, Taukei’aho, Lord, and Vaa’i have been playing well enough to justify their spots.

Nearly all of the best players sitting at home are non-Canes players: Scott Barrett, Tamaiti Williams, Shannon Frizell, Anton Segner, Caleb Clarke, and Leicester Fainga’anuku.

Put the fanboyism away, Mr. Bidwell, and stop writing sh*t headlines. The All Blacks lost because they weren’t good enough at key moments.

PS. I’m a Hurricanes fan so don’t bother accusing me of being biased either.

Hamish, mate. It’s quite SIMPLE. Sort out the set piece.

Its an interesting one. At 11, 13 & 15 the AB selectors have preferred a chief over a hurricane. On the loose forwards essentially 4 chiefs and only 1 hurricane even in the squad. Are they all better players? Does that mean the canes over achieved and chiefs choked? Is Laidlaw simply an amazing coach and McMillan/ Gibbes under delivered?

rennies first bad move was not picking kirifi… it's showing now.

Chiefs is a team of losers, not winners. 4 years in a row to lose the finals to 3 different teams.

100% agree.

Plenty of hurricanes and still losing tests

I would love to understand Kiwi scribes logic. The Boks are not bigger and stronger!

Holland is bigger than both our locks. You have players like Tosi, Williams, Samesoni, Parker, Tuipolotu, Fehi, and Amua.

All big, strong and fast.

I do agree that the emphasis on how they want the players to play shifted from years ago.

It’s not just a question of size, but of power. Look at the size of the Boks' arms, for instance—they’re massive. Those guys are muscular, lean, and compact, and they deliver a painful hit on impact. You don't see that with the All Blacks (or any other team). When you take that kind of hit to the chest—once, twice... That’s where their strength lies: in the relentless repetition of collisions and impacts. Eventually, the opposition cracks!

Ok so this genius has worked out that the ABs are being schooled at scrum and maul. On that basis he says the team is clearly inferior. But this socalled Chiefs laden inferior AB team has scored 13 tries in 3 games against the best rushing defence in the world. 5 more than the Boks. The very mobility that he derides is an attacking weapon that the Boks cannot seem to stop. Oddly their is no mention anywhere in any article or post I have seen of this very clear vulnerability - I dont think even NB has analysed this closely. Its simply drowned out by chorus of “scrum” chanting. Did the Boks deserve to win the home series - sure. But this declaration of clear inferiority belies the fact that the SB have won by just 7 and 5 and the net points difference across all three games favour the ABs.

This one really made me laugh. As if the composition of a side as in the origin of the players who make it up has any functional bearing on how the team plays at this level of competition.

Most of the players who struggled in the last two tests have been Canes anyway so not sure what the purpose of the finger pointing is other than to misdirect.

I mean Mr Bidwell's bias is once again on display but aside from that there's no real substance to the claims made here. Aumua and Numia aside the rest of the Canes have been mixed so far across this tour.

Having said that, what should be encouraging to those who follow and support the wrong side of the Tasman is that the team has largely returned to playing the style of game that has made them such a fearsome side for well over a century and won them so many accolades.

The execution still needs some polish and clearly there's work ons in the pack especially in the set piece but they're largely minor corrections which the team will no doubt fix over the next 12 months.

So there's no need to doom and gloom. And the tone that Bidwell has chosen for this article completely contradicts the article he wrote right before the first test where he claimed that a win from this series as far as the ABs should be concerned is winning one game.

Well, they did that with the first test and it's not as if they've fallen away across the remainder of the series to date by any measure.

They've been shockingly efficient with very little opportunity and what instead I think has been revealed and are the signs that should frighten any other side is that there's no single way to defeat the ABs and that they're back to a level where in order to win you just have to beat them, they're not going to help you.

One could argue the discipline is perhaps still not quite there but that's more a factor of time rather than an entrenched problem that they need to solve. And it also has to do with how the players communicate with each other and with the officials.

There's plenty of promise in this squad and injury permitting there should be every expectation that they go well through the remainder of this year and set themselves up nicely for the World Cup next year.

And that won't have anything to do with who is in the side. They're rediscovering mana and that's the important thing.

No need to over complicate things it’s simply just a case of constantly looking at all the improvements they can make and keep working both on and off the paddock.

With the scrum they need to replicate with some consistency the “ good” ones.

Plenty more scrums to pack down this year starting this WE if they can halve the penalties that’s going to go a long way with margins being so tight between the sides.

As he said, our set piece is a problem, especially the scrum. What is Mike Cron doing these days? We can probably get away with it against other teams, but not against SA, they are just too good.

Well one thing that Bidwill has said is nonsense; The Canes came into their own this year and were definitely the dominant side, playing high speed, highly entertaining rugby.

But where Bidwill is right is his conclusion. It’s not the rugby that will win us the RWC back. So far Rennie has just given the ABs their confidence back, whereas Razor tried to turn them all into Crusaders, and just demoralised everyone.

What Rennie has failed to do is fix all the set piece woes that dogged Razor, and in fact the scrum has quite literally gone backwards. The AB scrum has never been dominant, but it was usually good enough for parity, and thats all our backs needed.

The very real problem is that you can take the player out of Super Rugby, but you can’t take the Super Rugby out of the player. So which do we want? entertaining rugby, or cup winning rugby? Your call, NZ Rugby.

Arguably, the Chiefs manage to make deep finals runs so often because they have such a deep roster (especially since they added Taranaki to their regions at a time when the region became a powerhouse), particularly in the loosies and backs. The problem with just relying on players from title winning teams though is that you still have to consider how much of the share of the overall talent they have and how much that influenced their success in the overall competition.

It was different when the Aussie SR teams were stronger and when we had the SA teams in there but without them, we’re competing with other NZ teams and having some teams hoarding more of that talent at the expense of others. I’ve said this to death, but a lot of Razor’s success, especially running a setpiece heavy game, came from having most of the ABs starting tight five in his pack, meaning that they’re essentially playing their understudies in most of those matchups rather than having as many direct matchups with closer positional rivals. Clearly with the way the ABs played under him, he expected the ABs to be able to do the same against their opponents despite other countries having more forwards heavy games than us.

This is the argument though for forcibly ensuring a lot more parity within Super Rugby and NPC. Most of the teams in the competition should be competitive. Whether this is done via a draft (either for new entrants or imports), trades, tighter salary caps and contract stipulations that count test money or creative scheduling who knows, but teams like the Highlanders or Force constantly vying for wooden spoons while the Crusaders go on runs without losing much top talent doesn’t make the competition more sustainable. Going back to my example above, if that Crusaders pack (or in the past, the Blues backline) had enough of the players get test caps and qualify for a bigger contract, they’d have to let go of some of their players to teams that need them and therefore be under more pressure to repeat than they would be under the current system. Sharing NZ talent with Australian teams would go a long way too - makes sure everyone gets game time - not like the NRL doesn’t give the Warriors Australian talent.

It’s one thing that’s been great about this year’s NPC - teams like Northland, Harbour and Manawatu, teams that have regularly lost talent to bigger unions at least getting some imports from Aus (e.g. Israel Leota) helping them be more competitive than previous years. If we up that, then we get more All Blacks coming up who are used to having to being tested a lot more.