Julian Savea is in better form than when he last earned an All Blacks call-up

All season, pundits have been asking what winger Salesi Rayasi has needed to do to earn himself a place in the Hurricanes starting line-up.

In his first game of the year, against the Blues in Dunedin, Rayasi was the man who scored three expertly-taken tries – including two in the final 10 minutes – to help his side to a come-from-behind 33-32 victory.

“We know what he can do with the ball, we know he’s quick,” Hurricanes head coach Jason Holland said after the match. “It was a good outing for him. We’ll just keep working away and he’ll keep getting better and better at the small parts of the game and [if we can] get him finishing three tries every week [then] everyone’s happy.”

Why rolling maul tries aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be.

Why rolling maul tries aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be.

The following week, Rayasi held his spot on the left wing against the Highlanders and while the action didn’t necessarily flow his way as it had against the Blues, Holland said that Rayasi had actually put in a better performance.

“To be honest, I think he played better tonight than he did last week. Some people might not see that but he had much more intent and he was way better defensively, way better around his breakdown. I thought he was really good tonight even though he didn’t score any tries or get too many opportunities, that’s just the way the game went.

“Sometimes as a winger you’ve got to do the hard yards and you’ve gotta do the breakdown, you’ve gotta do the carry and you’ve gotta do the D so I was really with what he did tonight.”

It wasn’t until the Hurricanes squared off with Moana Pasifika on Tuesday, however, that Rayasi was given another opportunity in the No 11 jersey, with Wes Goosen and Julian Savea the preferred starters for Holland throughout the season to date.

Ahead of last weekend’s fixture with the Crusaders, Holland noted that Rayasi had done nothing wrong to miss out on selection but implied that try-scoring rates perhaps weren’t the major focus for the Hurricanes selectors when determining who would run out on the wings.

“Sometimes the media and the public get carried away with who’s scoring tries without looking at some of the smaller detail,” Holland said.

Those smaller details will largely include work done off the ball – an area where Holland has presumably determined the likes of Savea and Goosen excel at compared to the less experienced Rayasi.

Statistics from the current season don’t necessarily back that up. Per game, Rayasi is hitting slightly more rucks than Savea, attempting and completing more tackles, and returning to action quicker following a tackle.

When it comes to the core duties of a wing, however, it’s hard to not be impressed with how Savea has performed in recent weeks

When Savea left New Zealand’s shores to link up with Toulon following the 2018 Super Rugby season, it was fair to say that the form of the then-26-year-old left much to be desired.

After first making the step up to test rugby in 2012, Savea became an automatic selection on the left wing for the All Blacks but his impact had started to wain following the 2015 World Cup. In 2016, he was dropped from the Hurricanes starting line-up due to fitness issues and despite notching up plenty of tries throughout the test season for NZ, it seemed clear that Savea’s time in the sun was coming to an end.

The following year, he was called up for the All Blacks’ series with the British and Irish Lions but lost his starting spot to Rieko Ioane and then missed out on selection in the squad for the Rugby Championship – the death knell for his test career.

Now, almost five years on, Savea is in better form than in his final season with the All Blacks and it’s not entirely out of the question that he makes a return to the national fold later this year. He might not necessarily be the best right wing of New Zealand’s Super Rugby sides at present – that honour would have to go to Sevu Reece at the Crusaders – but if Savea was playing in 2017 the way he’s playing for the Hurricanes at present, it’s entirely possible he would have never been dropped from the team in the first place.

Generally speaking, the All Blacks have unsurprisingly always been a hard team to crack. We’ve seen the odd bolter selected in the squad despite limited minutes at the level below – think Josh Lord in recent seasons Tupou Vaa’i  – but in most instances, players have to be bashing down the door for multiple seasons on the trot before they’re given a coveted black jersey.

That’s partially due to the high standards demanded of the New Zealand national side, but also in part down to the fact that it’s also very difficult to lose your place in the set-up.

On Super Rugby form, in particular, world-class performers like Ma’a Nonu probably deserved to be dropped from the All Blacks on more than one occasion but the selectors persisted, knowing they could get the best out of their crop of players.

Savea was probably lucky to make the All Blacks in 2016 based on his form throughout that year’s Super Rugby season but after 18 months of failing to impress – coupled with the arrival of Rieko Ioane – he was eventually cut loose.

Savea had lost his pace, lost his dynamism – even lost the strength that made him such a hard man to bring to ground. Undoubtedly, there was snowballing effect where his less than impressive form hindered his confidence which hampered his play. Now, half a decade later, those key facets of his game appear to have returned. He might not be the fastest winger in New Zealand but he’s still incredibly quick, while his strength was on full display against the Crusaders on Friday when, in one instance, it took five tacklers to eventually bring Savea to ground – and he still managed to free his arms for an offload in contact.

The two-time nominated World Rugby Player of the Year is not the same player he was when he tormented France at the 2015 Rugby World Cup but he’s also performing at a higher level than the following season, when the All Blacks selectors still decided to include ‘The Bus’ in their squad for the Lions series.

With Sevu Reece, Rieko Ioane, Will Jordan nailed on selections for New Zealand’s series with Ireland this year, and George Bridge, Leicester Fainga’anuku and Braydon Ennor all possible call-ups who can play on the wing, it would be hard to find room for Savea in this year’s test squad – but it’s not an impossible suggestion.