Neil Barnes on All Blacks' tweaks since getting 'shown up a little bit' by Stormers

All Blacks 2IC Neil Barnes isn’t satisfied with his team’s efforts to begin the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour, despite an accumulated 142-40 scoreline through three games against their club opponents.

New Zealand handed the Bulls a 50-19 defeat at Loftus Versfeld over the weekend, putting up a more staunch fight in areas like their driving maul defence that hurt them a week earlier against the Stormers. The intervening Sharks game ended with a goose-egg for the hosts.

Barnes said he’s pleased with the signs of progress, but is hungry for more ahead of a big step up against the World Champions this weekend.

“As a coach, you’re always wanting more,” he told Jason Pine on Newstalk ZB. “But we’ve had a good test up front; when you think about our first game against the Stormers, we got shown up a little bit in our maul defence and set piece. But we’ve made some shifts in that; still got more to do.

“But the awesome thing is we’re creating a lot of opportunities. Just unfortunately, our skill sets didn’t let us execute as much as we’d like…

“Without being too negative, I think we probably left four or five tries out there. Like I said, we’re creating a lot, and that’s what we’re after. We’ve just got to get better at finishing. But look, we’re getting plenty out of it, and good on these teams that were playing against us because it’s out of season for them.”

Team Form

Last 5 Games

10 - 17

43 - 0

42 - 28

45 - 21

80 - 31

19 - 50

0 - 54

21 - 38

40 - 21

47 - 17

5

Wins

5

5

Streak

5

34

Tries Scored

35

137

Points Difference

151

4/5

First Try

4/5

4/5

First Points

4/5

4/5

Race To 10 Points

4/5

Moving on from URC club teams to the No.1 ranked Test team in the world requires plenty more lifts across the park, with a hostile 10bet Ellis Park crowd awaiting the historic Test series opener.

“You fine-tune a lot now,” Barnes added. “It’s a Test match coming up, less experimentation. But we will still be playing with a positive mindset. It’ll just be at a way, way higher level, as we’re all well aware we’re playing against one of the best sides in the world, and there’s an understanding that we’ll need to be at our best to compete.”

To address evolving challenges such as set-piece play and execution, Barnes and his fellow selectors are keeping their players on their toes. When asked whether places in the matchday 23 were still up for grabs, he replied with an emphatic “hell yes”, explaining that the All Blacks “deliberately haven’t picked a Test side” to keep all options open.

“We’ve got a pretty open mindset about what our Test team should look like. Obviously you have a rough idea what it would be. But the awesome thing about these games is allowing people to put their hands up, and we’ve got a lot of competition now across the team for different positions.

“The jerseys are there for the grabs, and it’s just going to be selected on performance.”

Still just two months into their hands-on leadership of the All Blacks, the coaching group has had to exercise diligence in implementing their new game plan to avoid overwhelming players with information. Simple messages have been shared publicly, too, with pace and breakdown brutality core principles of the attack.

Barnes conceded that it was “part and parcel” of the game for South Africa to know what was coming their way.

“We’ve just gotta have enough variety in our game that they can’t anticipate what we’re actually going to do. So yeah, we’ve got multi-threats across our game, and yeah, if they get some wins and that sort of thing defending us, so be it. But we’ll keep trying to expose them.”