LONG READ ‘Rising force’ Proctor gives All Blacks Ioane dilemma

In the last few weeks, two contrasting storylines have played out which have highlighted that All Blacks coach Scott Robertson is likely to face one specific and seemingly endless question in 2025.

And that question is how, or indeed if, he intends to give the rising force that is Billy Proctor more Test exposure, and what will that mean for incumbent All Blacks centre Rieko Ioane, who continues to look a more natural wing than he does midfielder.

Just how live an issue this is has been well illustrated in recent weeks, starting in mid-April when Ioane announced he will be replacing Jordie Barrett at Leinster, and joining the Irish giants later this year for six months.

The surprise was not that Ioane was taking a sabbatical – everyone knew he had a contractual right to one – but his chosen destination was an eye-brow raiser given his infamous exchange with Johnny Sexton after the 2023 World Cup quarter-final.

But he’s going to Ireland, not to win over a disgruntled public, but to grow and refine his craft as a midfielder.

Proctor hit the headlines a week later when he returned to the Hurricanes starting line-up after a prolonged injury break and made a significant contribution in the unexpected 35-29 victory over the Brumbies.

It’s not an exaggeration to say the Hurricanes had largely been off their game for most of the season and then Proctor returned to their midfield and everything clicked.

This is a selection decision that will have lasting ramifications about the way the All Blacks set up their attack and will provide a deep insight into how Robertson wants his team to be perceived.

Even Hurricanes coach Clark Laidlaw said as much after the game. “He [Proctor] doesn’t like hearing it when he’s sitting right here but yeah, [he was], huge. We’ve missed him heaps.

“It’s no surprise Billy is back and some of our outside backs are playing really well.”

A few days after making such an obvious impact in Canberra, Proctor announced he has extended his contract to stay in New Zealand until the 2027 World Cup – setting up an intriguing three-year battle with Ioane for the All Blacks No.13 jersey.

Intriguing because it’s a contest that has more resting on it than the individual hopes and ambitious of Ioane and Proctor.

This is a selection decision that will have lasting ramifications about the way the All Blacks set up their attack and will provide a deep insight into how Robertson wants his team to be perceived.

In the crudest terms, Ioane is a line-breaking centre, who has the pace to get outside rush defences and the power to break tackles.

He’s also become a supremely good defender, more so in his ability to make head-on impacts than his actual reading of the opposition attack – but still, he knows how to shut up shop for New Zealand. He’s also played 81 Tests and built a combination with Jordie Barrett, with the two men the preferred midfield pairing since late 2022.

Proctor is a natural distributor and facilitator of any attack plan. He is an accurate passer, with a varied skill-set and one of the most innate readers of the game, be it knowing how to link his team’s attack or shut down the opposition defence.

And, to keep things in their crudest terms, there is an obvious sense brewing within the rugby fraternity that Proctor is the agent of change the All Blacks need to get more out of an attack that didn’t consistently deliver last year.

Such was the desire to retrain Ioane into a distributor that for training sessions after that July series against England, he wasn’t allowed to run with the ball. He had to pass it every time he had it.

Robertson obviously had that same thought last year – or at least he lost confidence in Ioane early in the season when he dropped him for the opening Rugby Championship Test against Argentina.

All he would say of that decision was: “This is the best for this Test match against Argentina. We had a conversation with Rieko and it’s a competitive position. It’s a performance-based sport and you know, everyone’s got areas to work on.”

Robertson didn’t need to spell it out any more clearly than that. In the first two Tests of the year, Ioane made a grand total of one pass and blew a certain try-scoring opportunity in the first game against England by not slipping the ball to the unmarked Mark Tele’a.

Such was the desire to retrain Ioane into a distributor that for training sessions after that July series against England, he wasn’t allowed to run with the ball. He had to pass it every time he had it.

It was a big call by Robertson to drop Ioane, who had embedded himself as the first-choice No.13 since midway through 2020, but the seemingly more meaningful decision was to replace him with Anton Lienert-Brown and not Proctor.

The Hurricanes midfielder had made his debut in the previous Test against Fiji and had looked born for the job. He read the game superbly – knowing when to pass and when to run, and just as he had throughout Super Rugby, gave the attack the shape it needed.

But strangely, he wasn’t promoted to start against the Pumas and wasn’t seen again in an All Blacks shirt until late October, when he started against Japan in Tokyo.

Ioane was reinstalled to the starting spot for the return match against the Pumas and remained there, despite never convincing as a natural distributor or never quite being able to facilitate the All Blacks attack, because the art of knowing when and how to give a pass is not one that he has yet learned.

There were several occasions throughout the year when the All Blacks had defences stretched, but Ioane couldn’t make the definitive pass to strike the killer blow.

There was limited evidence that Ioane could be the player the All Blacks needed him to be to organise their multi-phase attack game.

When he was restored to the team for the return match against Argentina, he made the right decision to throw a pass when there was space on the outside, but it was too low and hard for wing Caleb Clarke to catch.

In the game against the Wallabies in Sydney, he threw one pass directly into touch, although it’s true that by the end of the year, against Ireland in Dublin, he had one beautiful catch and pass in one movement that led to Tele’a making an extra 20 metres and the All Blacks scoring two phases later.

There was limited evidence, however, that Ioane could be the player the All Blacks needed him to be to organise their multi-phase attack game.

Robertson, though, was reluctant last year – his first in the job – to make too many changes to established combinations and take too many chances on inexperienced players such as Proctor.

But given the impact Proctor has made in Super Rugby in such a short time and the fact that Ioane has been quiet and underwhelming as part of an underachieving Blues campaign, the justification to consider change is undeniably strong.

It is made stronger by the fact New Zealand is bidding farewell to incumbent All Blacks wing Tele’a and Robertson could, metaphorically kill two birds with one stone by promoting Proctor to the midfield and shifting Ioane to the wing.

It’s hard to argue against this being a smart move – and one that the All Blacks should make in 2025 to maximise the time Proctor would have with Barrett to build their combination.

Ioane sees reverting to the wing as a backwards step – despite the fact he still looks as quick now at 28 as he did at 19

The two are already club mates at the Hurricanes and showed last year that they gel well. Ioane is understood to be reluctant to return to the wing.  He feels it would be a career regression – a sign of him going backwards.

Throughout his school career, Ioane was a centre, but when he graduated to the Blues, they wanted to start him on the wing, believing that his teenage body wasn’t yet ready for the physical pounding it would take in the midfield.

No-one imagined he’d settle so easily in the unfamiliar position that he would make his Test debut off the bench later than they year and then start against the British and Irish Lions six months later.

At the end of 2017, Ioane was named World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year and probably should have been named Player of the Year as well, such were his finishing instincts.

New Zealand had known any number of crazy good wings over the decades, and Ioane was up there with the best, but he sees reverting to the wing as a backwards step – despite the fact he still looks as quick now at 28 as he did at 19.

When the subject of playing on the wing came up last year, he sat down with a group of reporters and said: “Not this again? I thought we had put that to bed?”

But unfortunately for Ioane, the issue is very much up and about, and unlikely to be put to bed any time soon.