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'Clumsy': Kiwi pundits weigh in on recent All Blacks discipline issues
By Henry Lee
Long gone are the days where teams manage to play consecutive games without getting a single yellow or red card, and the All Blacks certainly have had their struggles to keep 15 players on the park in recent times.
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Scott Robertson and his coaching staff will be disappointed with their five yellow cards over the course of the two Tests in Argentina to start the Rugby Championship, especially going down to thirteen players at one point of time in Buenos Aires.
Sevu Reece, Will Jordan and Tupou Va’ai were the three culprits in the Buenos Aires loss, with referee Nic Berry deeming them to all have made cynical acts over the course of the 80 minutes.
Reece and Va’ai both intentionally knocked the ball down trying to catch a pass from an Argentinian player, and Jordan was deemed to have changed his line while chasing a chip kick towards his own 22.
Four former All Blacks have discussed these discipline issues for Robertson’s men, ahead of arguably the biggest Test match in New Zealand since the 2011 Rugby World Cup final against France.
81-Test former All Black halfback Justin Marshall believes they have to be concerned with their recent discipline woes, because when you look at it historically, the All Blacks ship points when they are down a man.
“We’ve got to be concerned, because we leak points historically when we have players in the bin and it hurts the All Blacks,” Marshall said on The Breakdown on Sky Sport.
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“Hurt them in South Africa last year, when they lost Lomax, and all of a sudden the game really turned so we’ve got to be better in that space and equally, I feel a lot of them are 50/50, unnecessary yellows.
“l’d imagine a lot of those outside back ones are similar to what we saw from Argentina I thought, I’m pretty sure Barrett’s been done for like sticking your hand out nowadays, you just can’t do it.
“So there’s a lot that are team yellow cards, and you got to wear that, but a lot of them also are clumsy and inexcusable, and they’ve got to get better at it.”
Former All Black centurion Mils Muliaina explains that the concerning part of it is that they are not trusting their outside defenders.
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“The concerning part is that they’re not obviously trusting the defence, when you stick a hand out there, any of these guys coming across, it’s the system.
“So what does that come back to, are they sure that they know the defensive system? Do they trust a defensive system? That’s the clarity that they need to sort of try and get leading into South Africa.
“The one thing I would say also is nowadays, most teams are getting yellow cards. We leak a lot of points when we when we lose one, we lose two, we don’t sort of try and sort of hold things out and it’s a big concerning area for me.”
Current Sky Sport analyst and former All Black first-five Stephen Donald is a firm believer that they won’t be able to give the Springboks that many opportunities, as they will have the quality to punish the Kiwis.
“It becomes a lot more important, not just in general, but when you think of this week, they want Pollard to be getting penalties within halfway,” Donald said.
“And if not, they want to be able to put a line out inside your 30 or 40, and that’s their greatest strength to attack from so more than ever.”
“I know there’s figures sort of around that, seven or eight penalties a game. If you can limit it to that, you imagine that you’re going to go long, long way to winning this Test match.”
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