LONG READ 'Reckless' All Blacks must clean up act to return to No.1

There was a curious moment ahead of the All Blacks’ clash with the Springboks at the 2019 World Cup – one in which Rassie Erasmus, as only he could, went on a four-minute rant about how New Zealand had, for the last 10 years, won favourable treatment from referees as a result of their number one status.

His theory was simple – that referees tended to make decisions that favoured whoever they saw as the dominant team and that the All Blacks had deservedly earned the reputation of being consistently better than everyone else.

Erasmus seemed to be desperate to air his thoughts on this matter, to be sure that every referee at the tournament knew that while the All Blacks had been the number one team since 2009, they had arrived in Japan a little lower down the pecking order and so the default decisions that had favoured them needed to stop.

It sounded all a bit bonkers, the sort of ‘out there’ theories that Erasmus has become infamous for, and All Blacks coach Steve Hansen called him out for trying to have undue influence on the referee ahead of their pool clash.

But here we are five years on and maybe there was something in what Erasmus said after all. Maybe he wasn’t barking entirely up the wrong tree, because since 2020, the All Blacks have developed an endemic discipline problem.

They have become almost reckless in the way they give away penalties and gather cards and their lack of discipline has become the single biggest issue impacting their ability to regain that number one ranking they so covet.

The stats make alarming reading, as there is a distinct correlation between increased losses to tier-one opposition since 2020 and an exponential rise in the number of cards the All Blacks have been shown.

In 2020 the All Blacks played six, won three, lost two and drew one. In one of the defeats, they picked up a red card.

The indiscipline the All Blacks showed in the defeats to Ireland in 2021, and then in the second and third Tests of 2022, was crippling.

In 2021 and 2022 they played 29 Tests and were shown 13 yellows and three reds. They won 21, lost seven and drew one for a 72 per cent win ratio.

More illustrative, however, of how impactful their lack of discipline had become is that in four of the Tests in which they lost, they were shown either a yellow or red card, and on one occasion both.

The indiscipline the All Blacks showed in the defeats to Ireland in 2021, and then in the second and third Tests of 2022, was crippling.

When they lost to France in 2021, there was an untimely yellow card shown to Ardie Savea that opened the door for the home side to regain the momentum and charge home with the win, while England’s three tries in the last 10 minutes at Twickenham in 2022, to salvage an unlikely draw, came when the All Blacks only had 14 men on the field.

At the World Cup, they were shown a yellow card in the opening game against France and lost, and then in the final they copped a yellow and red and lost.

But what’s connecting this issue to Erasmus’ theory is that the discipline has not been cleaned up under new coach Scott Robertson.

The same problems are persisting and the same correlation between lack of discipline and defeats exists.

There is an overwhelming sense that they won’t win as much as they should until they clean up their act.

The All Blacks were in control of the Test against South Africa at Ellis Park this year until Ofa Tu’ungafasi was yellow-carded for pulling down a maul and a 27-17 lead became a 31-27 defeat.

There were two yellow cards in the next game in Cape Town – another defeat – and while the All Blacks held on to beat Australia 31-28 in the first Bledisloe Cup meeting of the year, their entire game collapsed after Anton Lienert-Brown and Caleb Clarke were sin-binned within seven minutes of each other.

Against England at Twickenham last week, New Zealand still managed to win 24-22 but they were on the wrong side of an 11-7 penalty count and had Lienert-Brown yellow-carded.

The penalty count was 9-1 against the All Blacks at half-time and that fact alone was arguably why England were able to stay in the fight and give George Ford two late opportunities to secure the win.

It’s why the All Blacks couldn’t keep the pressure on England when they had them scrambling at times – because they offered too many easy outs by conceding too many penalties. With a bit of accuracy and discipline, the All Blacks would never have found themselves hanging on at the death the way they did and there is an overwhelming sense that they won’t win as much as they should until they clean up their act.

“I haven’t seen the stats but just being there live and feeling it, feeling’s not always fact but I think the first half was nine to one and that’s not a position we want to put ourselves in around a match,” assistant All Blacks coach Scott Hansen said of the discipline problems at Twickenham.

Mostly the All Blacks are conceding what they themselves call “DAPs” – Dumb Arse Penalties – where they are either impetuous, careless or impulsive.

“What was our accuracy like? We weren’t making smart decisions at times around where we were applying pressure. We put ourselves in positions where England were applying scoreboard pressure because of the penalties. We do have to be better than that.

“So, definitely, as we go through the week we’ll acknowledge, what does that look like? And get some better solutions. But at the end of the day, in Test match rugby you can’t be nine-to-one in the penalty count and I think it was that in the first half.”

What’s really killing the All Blacks is the number of avoidable penalties they are conceding – infringements that are not marginal or the cause of an unexpected interpretation by a referee.

Mostly the All Blacks are conceding what they themselves call “DAPs” – Dumb Arse Penalties – where they are either impetuous, careless or impulsive.

As an example, Will Jordan dived on Marcus Smith after the England fly-half had scrambled back deep into his own 22 to rescue a desperate situation mid-way through the first half.

If Jordan had just bided his time, Smith would have been heavily outnumbered by All Blacks and who knows – he may have been turned over or forced to hold onto the ball.

The point is, the All Blacks created a golden opportunity to get themselves camped deep in England’s 22 and potentially score to go to 21-6 up 10 minutes before half-time.

Instead, England used that penalty to get into the All Blacks territory, win another one because for the second time New Zealand tackled someone without the ball, before the same mistake was made two minutes later.

So instead of going into half-time 21-6 ahead, the All Blacks were only 14-12 up because three silly penalties gave England momentum and opportunity.

The bigger issue would appear to be that New Zealand has remained wedded to an outdated culture of believing players should see what they can get away with in a game – test the limits of the referee and then adjust accordingly.

It is impossible not to wonder why this habit has been formed. When it was happening under the previous coaching regime, they took the blame for it.

It was seen as a coaching issue in the last World Cup cycle. But now it is still happening, is it possible that New Zealand had, as Erasmus suggested, masked their ill-discipline between 2009 and 2019 because they were getting benefit-of-the-doubt decisions from officials?

Was it always a problem, but they weren’t being pinged for it so much? Did New Zealand’s players live a charmed life that they no longer do now that they are the world’s number three team?

There is, potentially, some mileage in that theory but the bigger issue would appear to be that New Zealand has remained wedded to an outdated culture of believing that players should see what they can get away with in a game – test the limits of the referee and then adjust accordingly.

This seems to be the attitude across all Super Rugby teams and perhaps the issue is that the All Blacks inherit players who have come through a system that has not hammered into them the importance of playing strictly within the laws.

How else to explain it? At Twickenham, three times the All Blacks tackled English players who didn’t have the ball. Jordan flopped on Smith and Caleb Clarke was penalised for a deliberate knock-on when he did what all New Zealand players seem to do now – and come into a spot-tackle with an exaggerated wingspan in the hope that a late pass may hit his hand and be ruled accidental.

The All Blacks, amazingly, managed to beat Ireland in the World Cup quarter-final even though they picked up two yellow cards, but it’s hard to see how they can win big matches regularly when they spend so much of each game at a numeric disadvantage.