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'Proven that he's an international No 7': Foster's words for absent flanker

By Tom Vinicombe
Dalton Papalii. (Photo by Getty Images)

Given the extended squad the All Blacks have had to call upon this year, Ian Foster has needed to regularly let almost 20 players know on a weekly basis that they’ve missed out on selection for the next fixture in the calendar.

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That’s not a fantastic conversation to have at the best of times, but the fact that this weekend’s match with France is the final one of the season made letting players know they’d missed out on making the team even tougher.

Foster and his selection team have made 13 changes to the match-day squad for Saturday’s clash. As a consequence, some regular starters such as Codie Taylor, Ethan Blackadder and Dalton Papalii won’t feature in the final game of the campaign. There are also a number of fringe players who would have been hoping to get one last chance at putting in a good performance before the team breaks up for the summer who have missed out.

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The panel of Ross Karl, Bryn Hall and James Parsons run their eyes over all the developments from the past week of rugby.

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The panel of Ross Karl, Bryn Hall and James Parsons run their eyes over all the developments from the past week of rugby.

“I think the last week’s always the toughest and those Monday night conversations or Tuesday conversations aren’t very pleasant as a head coach,” Foster said following the team naming. “And particularly when we’re making a number of changes with guys that have sort of put so much into this tour and so much into this campaign but we just felt that we needed to go with the fresh bodies so I think that they’re never easy. Everyone’s highly competitive, they want to play.

“To be fair, the response has been [the players who missed out went] from bitterly disappointed to ‘What can I do for this team?’ so, again, the response has been outstanding.”

The crunch was particularly evident in the loose forwards, with Papalii’s and Blackadder’s omissions paving the way for Akira Ioane and Sam Cane to shift into the starting line-up and Shannon Frizell to come onto the bench but that still means both Luke Jacobson and Hoskins Sotutu have missed out on playing in the final two matches of the year.

While Papalii and Blackadder have shouldered heavy workloads throughout the season, making 13 starts and 17 appearances between them, the same can’t be said for Jacobson and Sotutu, who have primarily been utilised in the less competitive games.

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Still, letting any player know they’d missed out on the final line-up was a tough job for Foster but at least with men like Papalii he was able to soften the blow with some words of praise.

“I don’t like to share too much about those conversations but I guess [the conversation with Papalii] did involve a handshake and a ‘congratulations’ for an outstanding season,” Foster said. “He should be very, very proud of what he’s achieved.

“He’s pretty battered and bruised after that Irish test but he’s put in some big games for us this year and really proven that he’s an international No 7.”

The All Blacks’ final test of the season kicks off at 9pm CET on Saturday (9am on Sunday morning in New Zealand) from Paris.

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Jon 8 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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john 10 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

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