Why the All Blacks were forced into 'obvious' call to leave Ardie Savea home

All Blacks captain Ardie Savea will miss the early stages of the tour to South Africa with Rennie and his coaching team making a strategic decision to leave him home.

Dave Rennie explained that the cumulation of his playing time since last year his meant a 19-month continous season for Savea, starting with his campaign with Moana Pasifika in 2025.

Off the back of the international season with the All Blacks last year, Savea rolled straight into his commitments with Kobe Steelers in Japan as part of his sabbatical.

“Ardie’s been training and playing since January 2025,” Rennie explained.

“Obviously, he had that season there [with Moana]. He then went away with the All Blacks. He came to Kobe and been straight into the Nations Championship. So we need to find a window where we can freshen them up.

“This seemed the obvious time, and so yeah, it was a pretty simple decision.”

Rennie and his coaching team saw the ‘big picture’ and wanted to ensure that one of the most influential players was as fresh as possible for the four Test matches, which shape to be a gruelling contest between the top two nations.

The coach confirmed Savea would have played on and that this was a tactical decision to get the best out of the series. He will head to South Africa 10 days before the first Test in Johannesburg.

“I think it’s a decision that we’ve made on what we think is best for him. So you know, Ardie would plug on [and play], but I think it comes to a point at some stage, and it’s such a big series.

“Freshing him up prior to those four tests was essential.

“What we could have done was left him out of the last three, tried to freshen him up that way, but that was important to us and was important to him to play.

“So we think this is a really good compromise. He could have come on tour, and we might only played him in one of those games.

“But without just getting his head out of footy and getting him away a little bit. We trust him to do the work and turn up a good nick. He arrives 10 days before the first test, so plenty of time.”

With Savea absent for the first part of the tour, Rennie confirmed that Codie Taylor take over as ‘tour captain’ for the All Blacks.

“Codies Taylor will be the tour captain. He’s obviously now injured as well. He certainly won’t play in the first couple of games, Codie,” he said.

“But he’s got a huge amount of respect within this group, and the plan was always Codie would have only played one of those three games prior to the first Test, and so we’ll get a variety of leaders who we think can do the job on the day.

“I think a tour captain will deal with a hell of a lot of media and scrutiny while we’re over there. It’s not just the 80 minutes on game day, so good chance to grow others, but yeah, got a really high opinion of Codie. The boys love him and respect him, and I think he’ll be valuable for us over there.”