Assistant coach’s blunt update on Dalton Papali’i’s injury status

Yes it took JGP the best part of three seasons to convince the coaches he was a better bet tha Luke McGrath. So there was no easy 'in' to the Leinster first XV.

However the main disaster in NZ rugby is due to the player contracts and player power the Allblacks keep trotting out the same players until they've got greybeards.

Cane has been there since 2012 and yet each NZ franchise each year has at least two openside flankers.

What are the odds that NZ rugby can only find one seven capable of openside since 2012? And why on earth stress he get to be number one side 2016 and until he retires allegedly at the end of 2024?

Where is the investigation into where Dalton has disappeared to? What did he do wrong to be dropped other than not be Cane and not in the inner circle?

This starves the Allblacks of experienced depth and creates a crevice after each works cup.

The Allblacks have only got one new lock since forever in Tupou Vai and Darry and Lord are getting barely any minutes.

Cane and Savea are losers, so is McKenzie. They never win big competitions, that's not being mean or not suggesting they're not very good players, it's just stating their achievements at world cups.

NZ rugby needs to go back to selecting the Allblacks seasonally and stop picking players to start together that win nothing of consequence.

The Auckland blues won super rugby but you wouldn't think it with all the Crusaders and chiefs in the 23 for this Saturday.

Whatever happened to “No D1ckheads” and “Sweeping the sheds”?

Over the past 6 years we’ve watched the All Blacks lose their soul. On the plus side - we’ve seen the boks find their soul.

We’ve watched Australia just die.

Fascinating to watch.

I do think he’s capable of getting it right but I don’t think the public at large are going to be patient enough. Whether they’ll accept a 70% win ratio and losses against teams in the top 5. Whether shareholders will accept it. Brand ABs is 88% win ratio.

And if he doesn’t last - the impact on the next coach thrown in will be huge.

But trust me. The ABs are going to hammer Aus in the next two games. And our comments are going to be seen as out of touch.

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Systems of play are much more important now and you must have a captain who understands what is going right or wrong on the pitch. With the Irish system being played under Farrell for the Lions most likely, this should probbaly mean an Irish captain. Unless there is a head and shoulders above, type player/captain from the other nations and I am not seeing one.

It's all about opportunity, if they had of given it to him last week they might indeed have actually won with him on the field instead of Beauden. He may not have played midweek and picked up an injury that people are saying prevented him from being the 23 on sat.

I would never suggest to not give someone that chance, but there is a time for it and don't you think Jordan deserves it first? There is also all the other factors I mentioned to consider as well. Don't forget, there is certainly a 'right' choice in every circumstance. The best teams are generally the ones that get the most decisive choices rights.

2 years in the premiership, 2 years as an assistant international coach, then 4 years taking a team through a WC cycle would have given him what he needed to be the best ABs coach. As it is he is learning on the job, and his inexperience shows even more when he surrounds himself with assistant coaches who have no top international experience either.

He is being faced with extreme adversity and pressure now, possibly for the first time in his coaching career. Maybe he will come through well and maybe he won't, but the point is the coaching selection process is so flawed that he is doing it for the first time while in arguably the top coaching job in world rugby. It's like your first job out of university being the CEO of Microsoft or Google.

There was talk of him going to England if the ABs didn't get him, that would have been perfect in my opinion. That is a super high pressure environment and NZR would have been way better off letting him learn the trade with someone else's team. I predicted when Razor was appointed that he would be axed or resign after 2 years then go on to have a lot of success in his next appointment. I hope that doesn't happen because it will mean a lot of turmoil for the ABs, but it's not unthinkable. Many of his moves so far look exactly like the early days of Foster's era when he too was flanked by coaches who were not up to the job. I would like to see some combination of Cotter, Joseph, Brown, and Felix Jones come into the set up.