The biggest threat to the All Blacks is the All Blacks

I rolled my eyes when Kwagga Smith replaced Siya Kolisi on Saturday night. 

That’s the New Zealander in me, you see. 

We’ve become so accustomed to All Blacks replacements causing performances to deteriorate, that it’s hard not to assume that’s the case for everyone. 

I don’t relish continually writing about reserves but, in the wake of New Zealand’s disgraceful capitulation to South Africa at Sky Stadium, it’s hard not to. 

The Springboks deserve enormous praise for their 43-10 victory. Praise for their brave selections, praise for the brand of rugby they played and definitely praise for the impact of their bench. 

If Billy Proctor, Leroy Carter and Simon Parker stay on the field, do the All Blacks win that match? Who knows. 

But what I can say for certain is that Quinn Tupaea, Ruben Love and Du’Plessis Kirifi certainly didn’t make contributions as significant as Smith and his Springbok cohorts. 

Points Flow Chart

South Africa win +33

Time in lead

22

Mins in lead

39

28%

% Of Game In Lead

49%

45%

Possession Last 10 min

55%

0

Points Last 10 min

14

Week after week after week, All Blacks coach Scott Robertson replaces players who are performing well. And week after week after week, the team plays worse as a result. 

I suppose I understand replacing Samisoni Taukei’aho with Brodie McAlister. It’s hard to punch out 80 minutes in the front row, even if generations of players did it without complaint. 

Someone asked me the other day if the issue was a lack of talent. Are those on the bench so inferior to the starters that a decline in standards is inevitable? 

It’s not a lack of talent. Men such as Rieko Ioane, Caleb Clarke, Anton Lienert-Brown, Samipeni Finau, George Bower and Pasilio Tosi sat in the stands on Saturday night. All have performed well at test level. 

Others, like Mark Tele’a and Asafo Aumua, are surplus to requirements entirely. 

No, men such as Smith, Manie Libbok, Andre Esterhuizen and RG Snyman did better than their All Black counterparts because they’re better coached and know what’s required of them once they take the field. 

That’s a damning indictment upon Robertson and his coaching team, I’m afraid. 

You can lose games. You can have bad luck with injuries, perform below expectations or meet a superior foe. 

But the consistent theme of Robertson’s increasingly average tenure is that the substitutes are incapable of getting into the game, let alone positively impacting it. 

I despair at the pre-programmed nature of it. I hate that at, say, the 60-minute mark, off goes Proctor and on comes Tupaea. Never mind the state of the game, forget how well Proctor might be playing, the whiteboard says it’s time to make the prescribed change. 

That’s not coaching. Any halfwit can roll substitutes if a clock’s telling them to. 

Robertson earned this job. Hell, half of us spent years campaigning for it on his behalf. 

I’m trying to divorce myself from the results here. I’m trying to look for signs of a plan and of improvements. 

These All Blacks will win some and lose some and we’ve all grown accustomed to that. And, to a point, that’s sometimes not in their control. 

But they do have full control over personnel and they do have full control over coaching and strategising. 

If the subs know what their job is, I’ll eat my hat. 

There are any number of other things you could isolate, such as the lineout. Again, this is the call, this is your role, this is where we’ve decided the ball is going. 

I’m not sure everyone quite understood that on Saturday. 

I bang on about the bench thing because it’s always a shambles. People have commented on it ever since Robertson took the job and yet it’s as bad, or worse, than it’s ever been. 

If you can’t address a glaring issue like that, then what else are you incapable of? 

Yes, South Africa played wonderfully well on Saturday and I applaud them for that. 

But, to me, the biggest threat to the All Blacks is the All Blacks and their inability to get so many of the absolute basics right. 

I think the easiest way to say it is that every week – win or lose – it looks like they’re all playing their first test of the season.