All-rounder
Bledisloe Cup I; Farah Palmer Cup: Round 6; Mitre 10 Cup: Round 5
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!
If you want see the latest multi-sport athlete to commit to New Zealand Rugby’s development system in action, you can watch highlights of Jock McKenzie — named in Auckland Rugby’s academy side for 2020 this week, a year after playing cricket for the New Zealand U19s — smoking the ball to all parts for his provincial U17 side here.
All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.
Deep breaths
Sunday’s scoreline in Wellington was something of a surprise, but the narratives which Bledisloe I propelled in its aftermath were all too predictable: the usual quasi-conspiratorial conjecture about officials; the usual accusations about arrogance (“[m]aybe the All Blacks simply underestimated the Wallabies”); the scapegoating of a “lazy” player of colour whose personality doesn’t quite fit the traditional mould (“trying to look cool for the highlights package”); and the Kiwi media relishing the opportunity to stoke a head-coach controversy they’ve been kindling from the moment Ian Foster was appointed late last year.
If we leave these tired storylines to one side, there are some undoubtedly things we can learn from the All Blacks’ first test of 2020. But it’s worth taking a step back and remembering something first:
For that’s all we have here — a single data point. The danger of taking too much from a single data point is only heightened further when it’s been an unusually long time since the last one — and when a litany of tight calls could have changed its characteristics markedly.
Rieko Ioane’s apparent foot in touch for the game’s first score, the centre’s loss of control for what should have been another, a few questionable late hits on Richie Mo’unga, the ball squirting out of the side of a ruck — arguably forward off a yellow hand — ahead of Australia’s second try and a number of decisions around the breakdown during the frantic endgame all could easily have been adjudicated differently, and led to a different bottom line.
With all of that in mind, let’s focus on the fundamentals of the Wellington test. How will Ian Foster be feeling about his team now they have 80-plus minutes of test rugby under their belt?
With the ball
While their total of 16 points scored is significantly lower than their average of 35.0 per game against Tier 1 sides during the last World Cup cycle, there were positive signs for the All Blacks with ball in hand in each facet of their attack.
Their opening score was the culmination of a beautiful phase-attack movement, spreading the ball through 4 sets of hands to Jordie Barrett in space on the right wing moments after a breakout up the left-hand side.
The disallowed try on the stroke of half-time was then a masterclass in ‘click attack’ on turnover ball. After Folau Fainga’a loses control at the tail of a lineout and Sam Cane swoops expertly to regather, every component of the All Blacks machine fires into action instantaneously. The coherent and coordinated movement of the players in support of Barrett as he breaks up the middle is a sight to behold:
With a number of the Australian backs involved close to the lineout and effectively out of the game, the entire All Blacks three-quarter line floods forward in perfect formation on Barrett’s outside. Ardie Savea is also in support on the right wing’s left shoulder, with Aaron Smith and Sam Whitelock covering his right and Codie Taylor tucked in behind and ready to hit a breakdown — or receive an offload — if the ball carrier goes to ground.
While that movement ultimately did not result in 5 points on the scoreboard, Smith was given an opportunity to finish in the left corner in the opening minutes of the second half off the back of a well-designed and -executed lineout play involving hooker Taylor and his Crusaders teammate George Bridge on the blindside wing.
All in all — as Simon Gleave and Sam Larner have pointed out in their 22-entries analysis of the match — the All Blacks took their opportunities efficiently. Their issue in the second half was generating enough of those opportunities in order to keep accumulating points: as Gleave also notes, they didn’t progress the ball beyond the Australian 22m line for a 34-minute period between Smith’s score in the 44th and the sequence ending with a Jordie Barrett penalty in the 78th.
This inability to exert control over the game in that period will be Foster’s main concern as his focus moves to Auckland this coming weekend. In particular, he will look to address the way in which his backfield defenders gave Australia “some easy outs with their kicking from their exits” — albeit in wet, blustery conditions that had Mo’unga talking about how much he “[doesn’t] like playing” at Sky Stadium.
Damian McKenzie appeared to really struggle running into the wind during the second half to field the box kicks of Nic White — a player much improved after time in the Northern Hemisphere club game, and a favourite of excellent analyst Nick Bishop — but the All Blacks are unlikely to have as much trouble in this aspect of the game in their second test of 2020; overhead conditions at Eden Park typically aren’t as treacherous, and the possible return of Beauden Barrett from the Achilles niggle that meant he was a late scratch at the weekend should see a more robust aerial presence selected in the 15 shirt.
Without the ball
In holding the Wallabies to 16 points too, the All Blacks’ defensive performance was basically in line with their average over the 2019 cycle; over 48 Tier 1 tests, they conceded 17.4 points per game.
They were particularly effective at keeping Australia’s phase attack at bay during the first half, when they repeatedly repelled Dave Rennie’s key forward carriers during long sequences of play inside their own half before forcing a number of turnovers with strong work at the breakdown. (Australia retained possession at only 124 of their 135 rucks in the game.)
Across the whole 89 minutes, they managed things fairly comfortably when they were out of possession: the Aussies made considerably fewer metres per carry in the game than the All Blacks (3.3m vs. 4.8m), broke the line at a much lower rate (5.9% of carries vs. 10.1%) and beat defenders significantly less frequently (once every 7.0 carries vs. once every 4.7).
(They did a particularly good job on Taniela Tupou, their opponent’s most dangerous ball carrier, limiting him to 5m on 8 carries, but White was dangerous sniping around the fringes: he beat 5 defenders on his 14 carries, and was able to release 3 offloads.)
One of the most heartening elements of the entire performance for Ian Foster will have been the tireless off-the-ball work of his captain, Sam Cane. He led the team’s defensive effort from the front:
Outside of phase play, they also did a good job on the Australian set piece: the Wallabies were unable generate any sort of advantage at the scrum, turned over 3 of their 13 lineouts and were ineffective with their driving maul. (Their first try did come from a maul platform, but the All Blacks pack shut down the drive well before the ball was released to the backline.)
Another positive was the team’s discipline, with only 7 penalties conceded — compared to an average of 9.4 per game in Tier 1 tests from 2016 to 2019 — despite spending long periods of the game without the ball.
As with their attack, there were enough signs of New Zealand’s typical effectiveness in key components of the game — but, again, it was their inability to establish control over the game and play it on their own terms that was the issue. The fact that they made only 36.9% of the game’s total carries on Sunday illustrates this starkly: in only 1 of their 48 Tier 1 matches in the last World Cup cycle — their 2017 victory over Scotland at Murrayfield — did they have a lower share of the ball.
While there’s no question that the team will have identified “a lot of stuff that [they] were disappointed in” in Wellington, many of the key elements that made Steve Hansen’s All Blacks successful for the last 4 years were still evident: a solid set-piece platform, effective ball progression with the ball and the prevention of effective ball progression without it. If they are able to deal better with Australia’s kicking game at Eden Park and exert more territorial pressure through their own, they should be able to establish a better balance between these elements and improve things significantly on the scoreboard.
New Zealand are not unfamiliar with scrappy early-season performances against lower-ranking opposition, and a single game in which there were a number of positive signs is far from enough evidence to write off a new head coach — unless, of course, you’ve got a narrative to push.
Fast and loose
So far in 2020, the Mitre 10 Cup has lived up to its reputation as an exciting attacking competition with lots of ball movement.
Through 5 rounds and 35 matches of action there have been considerably higher rates of passing and offloading than we saw earlier this year in Super Rugby Aotearoa: teams have completed 1.34 passes per carry on average in the NPC and offloaded on 8.6% of all carries — compared to rates of 1.25 and 7.7% in the franchise competition.
Two masters
On the field, the Highlanders’ signing of Japan back-rower Kazuki Himeno is likely to prove an exceptional bit of recruitment; respected talent scout Alex Shaw (now of Ealing Trailfinders) feels that they now “have one of the top 10 back rowers in world rugby” on their books.
Off the field, however, it drew further attention to the potential conflicts raised by Tony Brown’s simultaneous roles as an employee of the Dunedin franchise and of the Japan Rugby Football Union. (He returned to assist Aaron Mauger before the 2020 Super Rugby season, and signed on to continue as second-in-command to Jamie Joseph after last year’s Rugby World Cup.)
Joseph and Brown’s links with the Highlanders are so strong that such a deal may have been on the cards even if the former All Black fly-half had not returned last year, but the ability to have an ongoing working relationship with one of his international coaches will undoubtedly have been a positive to Himeno.
However, things could soon get more complicated. Franchise CEO Roger Clark is yet to announce who will succeed Mauger as head coach for 2021, but has stated publicly that they would be “silly not to consider” Brown for the role.
As Clark noted in this recent piece with Paul Cully, one of the two Super Rugby coaches on NZR’s payroll at each franchise is typically the head coach — but this is a custom rather than a requirement, and the CEO indicated that he would intend to keep Brown employed directly by the club were he to take on the role.
His reasoning? That “New Zealand Rugby coaches can’t be coaching for another country”. But regardless of the identity of his legal employer, it’s easy to foresee a substantive conflict arising down the line if Brown does take on the top job in Dunedin — especially, as Cully notes, “should Japan get entry into an expanded Rugby Championship in coming years”.
Seats at the table
With the appointment of former Black Fern Melodie Robinson to its Rugby World Cup Board, World Rugby continued to improve the diversity of its governance committees.
As the announcement of Robinson’s appointment on allblacks.com stated, “every [World Rugby] committee features broader nation, female and independent representation with 30 per cent of all committee members women and three committees chaired by female Council members”.
Meanwhile, at NZR level, the national governing body are still some way off “the [NZ] Government target of having a minimum of 40 percent of each gender on National Sports Organisation boards”; the appointment of Jennifer Kerr earlier this year took them to a 7-2 split between men and women on theirs.
Nicola O’Rourke was also nominated as an ‘Aspiring Director’ at the 2020 AGM in April, but Chair Brent Impey has given no indication of when she might be transitioned “into a fully fledged role”.
Pass of the week
Waikato roll on towards the playoffs in the Farah Palmer Cup, with a win away to North Harbour last weekend preserving their unbeaten record.
Having named Black Ferns Sevens superstar Stacey Fluhler on the left wing in each of her 3 appearances to date this season, head coach James Semple finally succumbed to the temptation to combine her in the midfield with fellow international Chelsea Alley — and the pair showed great chemistry to finish off the third try of their team’s 62-0 victory, completing a 22-minute hat-trick for Fluhler in the process.
Having already picked off a pass for her first and worked hard to fill the field on kick return for her second, the centre is hovering dangerously on the right-hand side of the midfield as Waikato attack deep in the North Harbour 22. After loose forward Ashlee Gaby-Sutherland releases Alley with a screen pass behind prop Toka Natua, Fluhler shows good awareness to track her partner’s run across the field and fade around the pressure of the defender opposite her.
Her reading of the situation is perfectly coordinated with Alley, who darts into the gap left by the aggressive decision of Fluhler’s defender and extends her left arm to flip a creative pass behind her back:
Fluhler beats the last defender with a delightful dummy and head fake, and Waikato are in again.
Loose threads
In case you missed it on Twitter this week
Some impressive work on both sides of the ball by young back-rower Tyler Laubscher for the Manawatū Turbos against Canterbury
Quick hits
Dylan Brown, the 20-year-old Kiwi league starlet whose Parramatta Eels were eliminated from the NRL Finals at the weekend, is the latest player from the 13-person code to openly state that they’d consider a switch to union at some point in their career:
He also made some interesting comments about the respective talent development systems of the two sports, noting that “[r]ugby is harder, you have to wait longer for your opportunity, whereas league I was 15 and got picked up.”
While the NRL has tempted away a number of talented young rugby players from NZR’s pipeline in recent years as a consequence of union’s slow-and-steady approach, an interview with Mark Hammett at this year’s camp for elite schoolboys made it clear that it is not likely to change any time soon:
Former All Black prop Kane Hames has been working on becoming a top-level referee since giving up any hope of returning as a player due to concussion issues, and made an interesting point to Robert van Royen of Stuff about how “humanising” match officials could lead to a healthier relationship between them and other stakeholders in the game:
In an extract from a new book co-written with Rikki Swannell (Beaudy: Skills, Drills, and the Path to the Top), Beauden Barrett spoke of the benefit to his skills of trialing other sports during his family’s OE in Ireland in the early 2000s:
In another recent trans-Tasman clash, the Australian women’s cricket team extended their winning streak in ODIs to a record 21 games with a 232-run victory over the White Ferns in Brisbane. In the aftermath of another convincing series win for Matthew Mott’s side, Tim Wigmore wrote a good piece for The Telegraph about their consistently exceptional levels of performance — and the investment that the rest of the world will need to put in off the field in order to get close to matching them on it.
Finally, find @OptaJonny on Twitter to take a look at an interesting new attacking metric. ‘Tackle avoidance %’ takes the number of defenders beaten by a player (a figure widely available from ESPNScrum’s data feeds) and divides it by the number of tackle attempts they have faced (which is not currently public) — a more robust version of the ‘carries per defender beaten’ measure used here and at thechaserugby.com.