How the All Blacks XV could backfire on NZ Rugby
Will the All Blacks XV act as another carrot to prevent New Zealand’s next generation of talent from taking their services offshore, or could it have the opposite effect?
The new 28-man squad will travel north to take on Ireland A and the Barbarians in the coming weeks while the All Blacks will be tackling Japan, Wales, Scotland and England on their end-of-year tour.
With the World Cup taking place next year, the All Blacks XV will add depth to NZ’s selection stocks and will provide opportunities for the likes of Patrick Tuipulotu, Brad Weber and TJ Perenara to accrue some much-needed international minutes should they be needed in France, even though they’ve missed out on the first-string side.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for those players to experience a national team environment and prove themselves on the international stage, or for those who have already worn the All Blacks jersey to get more game time at this level and potentially earn a recall to the team,” said New Zealand Rugby’s chief rugby office Nigel Cass in early 2020, when the new venture was first announced.
“[The existence of the All Blacks XV] will aid with retention of players and personnel in New Zealand, which will benefit our Super Rugby clubs and provincial unions as well as the All Blacks,” he added.
On the one hand, you can see where Cass is coming from; NZ’s top professionals now have a second team to aim for should their dreams of earning an All Blacks call-up fall short. The side can be a stepping stone for aspiring talent while also adding a few extra dollars to the 28 players’ payslips (not to mention the coaches, management and other support staff who also travel with the team).
The flip side, of course, is that it also takes some of the mystique out of national selection.
Whenever an All Blacks squad is announced, there’s almost as much discussion surrounding the men who missed out as there is the men who earned selection.
While the coaches will sometimes shed a little bit of light on why a recent All Black has missed the cut, they never divulge too much information. They also generally avoid commenting on players who haven’t been in the set-up before.
This is perhaps as frustrating for the players as it is for the fans but it does ensure there’s always an air of mystery around who’s knocking on the selection door without quite getting themselves over the line.
It also means that the large majority of players never really know where they stand in the pecking order. Perhaps they were just one spot in the pecking order away from earning a first-ever international call-up, or perhaps they weren’t even in consideration for the squad – but the unknown means there’s an incentive to keep pushing and there’s an incentive to remain in the country because you might just be an injury away from playing for the All Blacks.
That mystery has now been squashed following the announcement of the 28-man All Blacks XV.
“It gives this tour even more meaning knowing that the All Blacks selectors have these players in their sights,” coach Leon MacDonald said after naming the squad. “It gives them [the players] a boost, and the opportunity to perform in front of them.”
The likes of Aidan Ross, Angus Ta’avao, Asafo Aumua, Luke Jacobson, Tuipulotu, Weber and Perenara might not have done enough to win spots in the All Blacks but they know they’re very much still on the selection radar while youngsters George Bell, Finlay Brewis, Zach Gallagher, Dominic Gardiner, Cam Roigard and Ruben Love will be acutely aware that if they play their cards right and develop in the way the All Blacks’ coaches anticipate, a black jersey could be theirs in the near future.
Spare a thought for the men who missed out, however.
Ollie Norris, Pouri Rakete-Stones and Jermaine Ainsley now know they’d need half a dozen props to go down injured before a Test debut is on the cards.
Powerhouse hooker Tyrone Thompson will have realised he has fallen behind 20-year-old George Bell in the pecking order, despite looking every inch a future Test hooker when featuring for either the Chiefs or Hawke’s Bay over the past year.
Quinten Strange, who was called into the All Blacks in 2020 and has now been working his way back into form thanks to an injury-free season with Tasman, has now learned he isn’t one of the top eight locks in the country.
Even with injuries ruling out fellow loose forwards Ethan Blackadder and Cullen Grace from contention, 2022 debutant Pita Gus Sowakula can’t get a look in with the second-string All Blacks XV.
There will be countless players across the country who will be in a similar boat, men who in the past would’ve believed themselves to be within a stone’s throw of finally cracking the mythical All Blacks squad – and that belief is what has undoubtedly kept a considerable number of older players plying their trade in New Zealand when they could have picked up a tidy sum of cash by taking their services overseas.
Of course, the men who’ve missed out on selection All Blacks XV aren’t forever blocked from eventually cracking the top side – but the mental hit from missing out on the XV will far exceed the hit they would have taken from simply missing out on the top squad.
It would be a different story if the All Blacks XV focussed solely on young players in order to fast-track them to Test-readiness but that’s evidently not been the edict for this current squad, with a number of older players included such as 33-year-old Bryce Heem.
The new All Blacks XV will undoubtedly boost New Zealand’s depth in the years to come but it could also have the unwanted side effect of signalling to those that miss out on selection that it might be time to start looking offshore. NZR may have just opened up a can of worms.
Comments on RugbyPass
He is right , the Crusaders will be a threat. Scott Barrett, ( particularly), Fergus Burke , Codie Taylor, ( from sabbatical) etc due back soon for the Crusaders. There are others like Zach Gallagher too. People can right the Crusaders off, Top 8 , here we come !!
1 Go to commentsWe will always struggle for money to match the other sides but the least the WRU can do is invest properly in Welsh rugby. Too much has been squandered on vanity projects like the hotel and roof walk amongst others which will never see a massive return. Hanging the 4 pro sides out to dry over the last decade is now coming back to bite the WRU financially as well as on the pitch. You reap what you sow.
1 Go to commentsWhat do you get if you cross a doctor with a fish? A plastic sturgeon
14 Go to commentsWhat happened to feleti Kaitu’u? Hasnt played in a while right?
1 Go to commentsGregor I just can’t agree with you. You are trying to find something that just isn’t there. Jordie Barrett has signed until 2028. By the end of that he would have spent probably 11-12 years on Super Rugby and you say he can’t possibly have one season playing somewhere else. It is absurd. What about this scenario, the NZR play hard ball and he decides to leave and play overseas. How would that affect the competition. There seems to be an agenda by certain journalists to push certain agendas and don’t like it when it’s not to their liking. I fully support the NZR on this. Gregor needs to get a life.
2 Go to commentsHope he stays as believe he can do a great job.
1 Go to commentsMake what step up? Manie has a World Cup winner’s medal around his neck and changed the way the Springboks can play. He doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone. The win record of the Boks with him in the team is tremendous. Sacha can be wonderful and I hope he has a very succesful Bok career, but comparing him to Manie in terms of the next Bok flyhalf is very strange. Manie is the incumbent (not the next) and doing pretty incredibly.
1 Go to comments00 😍 U
1 Go to commentsSabbaticals have helped keep NZ’s very best talent in the country on long term deals - this fact has been left out of this article. Much like the articles calling to allow overseas players to be selected, yet can only name one player currently not signed to NZR who would be selected for the ABs. And in the entire history of NZ players leaving to play overseas, literally only 4 or 5 have left in their prime as current ABs. (Piatau, Evans, Hayman, Mo’unga,?) Yes Carter got an injury while playing in France 16 years ago, but he also got a tournament ending injury at the 2011 World Cup while taking mid-week practice kicks at goal. Maybe Jordie gets a season-ending injury while playing in Ireland, maybe he gets one next week against the Brumbies. NZR have many shortcomings, but keeping the very best players in the country and/or available for ABs selection is not one of them. Likewise for workload management - players missing 2 games out of 14 is hardly a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Again let’s use some facts - did it stop the Crusaders winning SR so many times consecutively when during any given week they would be missing 2 of their best players? The whole idea of the sabbatical is to reward your best players who are willing to sign very long term deals with some time to do whatever they want. They are not handed out willy-nilly, and at nowhere near the levels that would somehow devalue Super Rugby. In this particular example JB is locked in with NZR for what will probably (hopefully) be the best years of his career, hard to imagine him not sticking around for a couple more after for a Lions tour and one more world cup. He has the potential to become the most capped AB of all time. A much better outcome than him leaving NZ for a minimum of 3 years at the age of 27, unlikely to ever play for the ABs again, which would be the likely alternative.
2 Go to commentsJake White talks more sense than anything I've read in the last 5 years. Hope someone's listening.
9 Go to commentsThe Springboks tried going down the road of only picking home-based players and it was an unmitigated disaster in 2016 and 2017. Picking overseas-based players has been one of the main reason the Boks have done so well since 2018, not only because of the quality Rassie could call on, but because of the knowledge and experience those players brought into camp from England, France and Japan. With some of the big names playing abroad it also gave younger players in SA the chance to break through at franchise level. Would we have seen the emergence of a Ruan Nortje if RG and Lood were still at the Bulls? Not so sure. I understand why Jake would want to block players leaving since his job depends on good results but it’s an approach that would take Bok rugby back to the bad old days and no South African wants to see that.
9 Go to commentsExeter were thumped by 38 points. And they only had to hop on a train.
39 Go to commentsI am De Groot.
1 Go to commentsHad hoped you might write an article on this game, Nick. It’s a good one. Things have not gone as smoothly for ROG since beating Leinster last year at the Aviva in the CC final. LAR had the Top 14 Final won till Raymond Rhule missed a simple tackle on the excellent Ntamack, and Toulouse reaped the rewards of just staying in the fight till the death. Then the disruption of the RWC this season. LAR have not handled that well, but they were not alone, and we saw Pau heading the Top 14 table at one stage early season. I would think one of the reasons for the poor showing would have to be that the younger players coming through, and the more mature amongst the group outside the top 25/30, are not as strong as would be hoped for. I note that Romain Sazy retired at the end of last season. He had been with LAR since 2010, and was thus one of their foundation players when they were promoted to Top 14. Records show he ended up with 336 games played with LAR. That is some experience, some rock in the team. He has been replaced for the most part by Ultan Dillane. At 30, Dillane is not young, but given the chances, he may be a fair enough replacement for Sazy. But that won’be for more than a few years. I honestly know little of the pathways into the LAR setup from within France. I did read somewhere a couple of years ago that on the way up to Top 14, the club very successfully picked up players from the academies of other French teams who were not offered places by those teams. These guys were often great signings…can’t find the article right now, so can’t name any….but the Tadgh Beirne type players. So all in all, it will be interesting to see where the replacements for all the older players come from. Only Lleyd’s and Rhule from SA currently, both backs. So maybe a few SA forwards ?? By contrast, Leinster have a pretty clear line of good players coming through in the majority of positions. Props maybe a weak spot ? And they are very fleet footed and shrewd in appointing very good coaches. Or maybe it is also true that very good coaches do very well in the Leinster setup. So, Nick, I would fully concurr that “On the evidence of Saturday’s semi-final between the two clubs, the rebuild in the Bay of Biscay is going to take longer than it is on the east coast of Ireland”
11 Go to commentsWhat was the excuse for the other knockout blowouts then? Does the result not prove the Saints were just so much better? Wise call to put your eggs in one basket when you’ve got 2 comps simultaneously finishing.
39 Go to commentsReally hope Kuruvoli and his partner rock the Canes.
1 Go to commentsI wonder what impact Samson has had on their attack, as the team seems less prone to trundle it up the middle, take the tackle and then trundle it up again. I lost faith in the coach last year as the Rebelss looked like a 2nd/3rd rate South African team. I also disliked Gordon standing back, often ignored as the forward battle went on and on. Maybe its our Aussie way of not getting off our A***’s until the enemy is at the gate.
86 Go to commentsThanks for the write up. Great to see the Rebs winning, I am a little interested in how they will go against the remaining kiwi teams, I think they’ve only played Hurricanes and Highlanders but how great to see these players performing!! I also see Parling has a job beyond June 30! A good move by RA? Also how do you fix the Rebels previously scratchy defence?
86 Go to commentsbe smart - go black
14 Go to commentsNext week the Crusaders hopefully have Scott Barrett back. Will be great to have the captain back. Hopefully he will be the All Black captain as well.
12 Go to comments