'Play didn't go his way': Former All Blacks reflect on Simon Parker debut

On a night where Codie Taylor celebrated 100 Test matches for the All Blacks against Argentina in Buenos Aires, Chiefs loose forward Simon Parker also made his debut for the All Blacks.

The big Northland No.8 made 20 tackles on debut against Argentina and showed signs of what he can do with ball in hand, but a couple of former All Blacks didn’t exactly see what they would have liked from the 25-year-old.

Reflecting on the match on Sky Sport, former All Black and current Sky Sports commentator Jeff Wilson says that the All Blacks’ performance didn’t get the best out of Parker’s strengths.

“Simon Parker just didn’t really get an opportunity in the game. Play sort of didn’t go his way and it wasn’t sort of given the opportunity to carry, which I thought he might have, but it wasn’t that sort of game where we had multiple phases,” Wilson said on the Sky Sport panel after the Test match.

Former All Black halfback Justin Marshall believes that this was because the All Blacks weren’t able to get hold of the ball for long periods, which could have been the main reason for Parker being quiet with ball in hand.

“And look, if you’re actually breaking the game down and going right, what happened over 80 minutes, I can tell you what happened.

“We didn’t have the ball, like, they basically had 70% of the ball, and they had better territory, our territory was okay but if you’re talking about playing fast, you talk about wanting to have tempo in the game, you’ve got to have the ball to do that and we just didn’t have it.”

Marshall also explains that the tactics the All Blacks used didn’t do Parker any favours, as the All Blacks struggled to string phases together.

“That means that tactically, we’re off, we’ve not got that balance right so yeah absolutely guys like Simon Parker can’t get into the game when you’re not putting 10-12, 15-18, 20 phases together.

“Fatigue in the defence, then when a big ball carrier like him gets a gets a tired defender to run at, to take on, because we didn’t get the opportunity to exhaust them that way,” Marshall said.

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Former World Cup winning All Blacks first-five Stephen Donald adds that the All Blacks set piece accuracy was untidy, and that their attack wasn’t as sharp as it could’ve been due to the lack of solid, clean ball from set piece.

“The boys will be sitting in the shed now, thinking, that was messy and usually that as a result of what you just touched on, if you haven’t got a nice lineout to out to launch off, if you’re not taking your high balls, then what are you getting your attack from,” Donald said on Sky Sport.