New report details source of Ardie Savea's All Blacks frustrations

A new report this week has investigated how talks between Ardie Savea and New Zealand Rugby (NZR) regarding Savea’s contract played out in the final months of 2025.

There was much speculation over Savea’s role in Scott Robertson’s abrupt departure from the All Blacks head coaching role in January, but RugbyPass contributor Gregor Paul’s latest contribution to the topic has aligned directly with NZR’s account of events, suggesting that any significant discontent from Savea’s camp was a largely separate issue.

This week, Paul shared his findings from looking into the story, outlining them in an interview with D’Arcy Waldegrave on Newstalk ZB.

Paul emphasised that he understood there to have been no Savea-led player revolt within the All Blacks, but the star flanker did approach New Zealand Rugby chair David Kirk with ambitions to end his New Zealand Rugby contract — which expires in 2027 — early.

“There’s a level of confusion about it… What was Ardie hoping for? He met David Kirk in early November to say, ‘look, I don’t think I can carry on’,” Paul told Waldegrave when asked how determined Savea was to get out of the current contract.

“By mid-December, he, or certainly his representation, was sitting around a table with New Zealand Rugby’s appropriate figures, talking about what they could do to keep him. And he was relatively confident, or New Zealand Rugby, rather, were relatively confident by mid-December that they were going to be able to come to an agreement to keep him.

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“So, it wasn’t a very long period, if you think about it; that’s about five weeks. So the fact that he came back to the table relatively quickly, he was willing to accept that there were no levers as such that New Zealand Rugby could pull, because they provided him with two sabbatical options in two of his contracts, and he’d taken both of those. He’d chosen to play in Kobe and earn a lot of money by doing that.

“But as a result, my gut feel here is that he just overstretched himself. He underestimated his calendar; playing at the World Cup in ’23, going straight to Japan, coming home, and going straight into an All Blacks campaign, moving up to Moana and basing himself in Auckland.

“And (he underestimated) what that (Moana Pasifika) campaign took out of him as well, because it was a huge campaign. It’s probably the best Super Rugby campaign anyone’s ever had, only to go back into the All Blacks.

“So he spent a long time away from home living that life. He put a lot of effort into his rugby, and he just probably underestimated the impact of all that. And at 32, I think he just probably hit the wall a little bit, and he just didn’t really know what to do.”

Savea’s nomadic lifestyle since leaving New Zealand for France’s Rugby World Cup in 2023 is likely to continue when he returns from Japan, with 16 games in the All Blacks’ 2026 schedule, just one of which is in Savea’s hometown of Wellington.

The 2023 World Rugby Player of the Year will get the usual, extended All Blacks summer break at the end of the year, but will again be away from Wellington for the 2027 Super Rugby Pacific season with Moana Pasifika.

Paul reports that it is currently being discussed whether Savea sits out the July Test window, in which the All Blacks host France, Italy, and Ireland to kick off the inaugural Nations Championship, before making himself available for the rest of the international season.