Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!
If you want to see some prominent Kiwi rugby players past and present — including Carlos Spencer, Liam Messam, Julian Savea and Ruby Tui, as well as league star Roger Tuivasa-Sheck — try their hand at a different code altogether, you can catch highlights of last Thursday’s Manuka Doctor All Star Celeb Slam here.
All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.
Painting pictures
Midway through The Breakdown’s roundtable discussion with the head coaches of each of New Zealand’s 5 Super Rugby teams earlier this week, Tony Brown of the Highlanders let slip how difficult it can be to beat Blues leader Leon MacDonald to the signing of a talented young player.
And, when the squads for the 2021 edition of Super Rugby Aotearoa were released on Thursday, it was clear that MacDonald had been busy. In addition to the previously announced signatures of Sam Darry, Zarn Sullivan and AJ Lam, the Blues dropped a couple more bombshells in their official announcement: they had managed to poach Taranaki and All Blacks Sevens wing Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens and Wellington forward Taine Plumtree from the Chiefs and Hurricanes respectively.
After a strong season in 2020, the franchise known for years as New Zealand’s perennial underperformers now appear to have a positive and coherent vision for their future under MacDonald in place — and that prospect was clearly enough to entice a couple of blue-chip youngsters away from their home franchises for a shot at Super Rugby glory in Auckland.
The Blues look to have had a clear strategy for their offseason work; in addition to that swathe of talented U20 players, MacDonald brought in a pair of forwards with All Blacks caps — Nepo Laulala and Dillon Hunt — who are still in their prime. With a formidable pack strengthened even further and a younger generation already learning the ropes behind them, the franchise are set up to challenge at the top of the domestic game for years to come.
In the backs, the signing of Sullivan — a natural 10 — gives them an excellent ball-player to slot in immediately at fullback in the absence of Beauden Barrett for the 2021 season, and potentially a franchise fly-half in the long term. Lam and Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens, meanwhile, are another pair of dangerous strike runners on the wings to back up Caleb Clarke and Mark Telea:
(MacDonald did line Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens up as a contender for the fullback position too, comparing him favourably to Will Jordan and David Havili in an interview today.)
Unsurprisingly, this year’s champions the Crusaders also appear to be clear about their path for the future — but Scott Robertson went about his business in a rather more low-key fashion than MacDonald.
All 4 of the newly contracted Super Rugby players in Christchurch have been promoted internally from the Crusaders’ academy, and their experience around the team environment — along with their appearances for Canterbury in this year’s Mitre 10 Cup — should enable them to slot in to an already cohesive unit with minimal disruption.
With double the number of recruits for 2021, their South Island neighbours may take slightly longer to establish effective combinations next season — but the Highlanders appear to have gone into their offseason with an obvious plan in mind too:
The addition of Squire and Himeno to a back row rotation already containing Marino Mikaele-Tu’u and Shannon Frizell gives the team serious ball-carrying heft at the position, while Evans and Josh Hohneck bring extensive top-flight experience back with them from Europe and give Brown a “better balance to [his] squad”.
At the Chiefs and the Hurricanes, however, things look much more reactive.
To be fair, the Hamilton franchise — who are in a unique position heading into 2021, with Clayton McMillan as only an interim head coach in Warren Gatland’s absence — have promoted a number of top prospects internally: lock Josh Lord and fly-half Rivez Reihana are a pair of U20-eligible players who have moved onto full contracts, while Xavier Roe (born 1998) and Kaylum Boshier (1999) have also signed on.
But the loss of Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens from their development system will rankle, having already seen Solomon Alaimalo depart for Dunedin; their replacements — Jonah Lowe and Chase Tiatia — are solid Super Rugby professionals, but do not offer close to as much long-term upside. It was a similar story at prop, where Nepo Laulala was effectively traded to the Blues for Sione Mafileo, and at fly-half: while Bryn Gatland is certainly a capable starter at this level, he nonetheless represents a clear downgrade on 50-test All Black Aaron Cruden.
In Wellington, Jason Holland was quick to snap up talented young outside back Ruben Love on a 3-year deal and loose forward Brayden Iose — a former New Zealand Secondary Schools captain — for 2 seasons. The rest of the Hurricanes’ signings appear solid enough, but — again — are either reactive (Luke Campbell at scrum-half in place of TJ Perenara “a few weeks ago”) or lower in potential than some of the moves pulled off by their competitors (28-year-old Lolagi Visinia and 24-year-old Pepesana Patafilo in the outside backs).
In a 5-team tournament where competition for homegrown talent is often ruthless, it doesn’t take much to lose a step on your competitors. 2020’s standout teams on the field, the Blues and Crusaders seemed to enter the offseason with clear strategies in mind, and executed them well to remain ahead of their rivals on paper — as the graphic above shows.
The Highlanders also appear to have focused their recruiting quite narrowly, and have emerged with a tangibly stronger and more experienced forward unit as a consequence. In what is effectively a zero-sum contest, that leaves the Chiefs and Hurricanes as the losers on Super Rugby Aotearoa 2021 signing day — with the damaging departures of top prospects Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens and Plumtree to Auckland symbolic of the inability of both franchises to get ahead of the game.
Ups and downs
In the All Blacks’ last 3 games of Steve Hansen’s tenure, a 12-point loss to England was sandwiched between comprehensive wins — by 32 and 23 points respectively — over Ireland and Wales.
It was a set of fixtures that neatly captured the essence of an era of Kiwi men’s rugby that was marked above all else by an “increased volatility in performance”. (During the 2019 World Cup cycle, they won a higher proportion of their games against other top sides by more than 20 points than in any previous 4-year period — but their overall winning percentage also fell away to 76.3% in these matches.)
It is a pattern which can be observed again this year: they notched 3 wins by 20 points or more, but 2 losses and a draw accompanied those dominant performances.
2020 may be a year in which it is uniquely difficult to tease out cause and effect in test rugby, but analysis of Ian Foster’s first year as head coach of the All Blacks has to at least acknowledge the good as well as the bad. Saturday’s 38-0 win over Argentina was their sixth biggest win ever over Los Pumas — while the Bledisloe Cup clincher in Sydney was the heaviest ever defeat for the Wallabies against their nearest rivals.
There will be plenty written here and at thechaserugby.com about the technical and tactical detail (and, often, lack thereof) that underpinned these first 6 matches of a new decade for a historically dominant team. However, those highs — along with an overall return of 22 tries scored and only 7 conceded in 480 minutes of rugby — suggest that, when they are able to exert control over the game with accurate kicking and discipline, the fundamentals of a strong All Black side are still there.
As more teams hit on a formula for playing effective test rugby, the question that Foster and his coaching team will be pondering over their long summer break is how to consistently exert that control.
Wood for the trees
As James Gemmell noted in a good recent piece for The XV, it is truly positive to see a number of top rugby teams focusing on “kindness” as they cultivate their professional environments:
There are always questions about how much value off-field ‘culture’ really adds to on-field performance — it is likely one of a number of traditional ‘intangibles’ of which the importance is significantly overstated — but Gemmell does draw attention to research which indicates, in his view, that prioritising acts of kindness is likely to make a professional sports team “a more successful place”.
However, framing the issue in this way misses a fundamental point.
Creating a positive environment for other humans to work and live in shouldn’t be something that is only justifiable if it has a tangible impact on the bottom line. The reason it’s good to create a positive professional environment is because a positive professional environment will have a beneficial impact on the mental health of those who occupy it on a daily basis; any performance benefit is ultimately secondary.
From an analytical point of view, it’s absolutely right to investigate and question how much of an impact various off-field factors like ‘team culture’ have on on-field performance. But, from a human perspective, coaches and managers shouldn’t need the results of a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether or not to incentivise their team to be nice to one another — the creation of an environment in which acts of kindness are prioritised and employees are valued is a more legitimate end in and of itself.
Whāinga
Stuff — who provide the bulk of the online media coverage of rugby in New Zealand — published a charter on Monday for “a brave new era” of the company.
The aims are laudable: they are seeking to become “a business…that represents and serves the diverse people of Aotearoa”, and have committed to “redressing wrongs and to doing better in the future, in ways that will help foster trust in our work, deeper relationships with Māori and better representation of contemporary Aotearoa”.
Their rugby section — in which coverage of women’s rugby has been relatively scarce, and coverage of players of colour occasionally problematic — does not yet appear to have acknowledged the publication of this charter. It will be interesting to see whether the wider organisation’s new goals filter through into material changes to its approach to sports journalism.
Pass of the week
‘Defiance’ is the word that comes to mind when you think about Rieko Ioane’s 2020 season.
The year started with his insistence that he could play in the midfield at the top level — an insistence which shouldn’t have been all that controversial, given that between 2015 and 2019 he started 11 games in the centre for Auckland and 17 games there for the Blues. (He also played 37 minutes off the bench in the midfield for the All Blacks at the Stade de France back in 2016.)
After getting the start at 13 for New Zealand in their first test of the season, a performance marked by a number of typically explosive bursts in attack was marred in the eyes of many by a failure to dot the ball down over the line at the end of the first half of the game. Unperturbed by the heavy criticism he received, he then proceeded to score a try in the third Bledisloe test using exactly the same technique.
In a way, therefore, it was fitting that — with the clock more than 4 minutes in the red — he stood in the midfield and played the final pass of the All Blacks’ 2020 campaign last Saturday in Newcastle. With the Pumas tiring, Ioane received a neat swivel pass from Blues teammate Hoskins Sotutu and had one last chance to create something positive for the team in his favoured position.
Argentina’s defence on the left-hand side of the preceding ruck is all over the place after Will Jordan and Scott Barrett combined for a big line-break up the near touchline 30 seconds earlier. Outside Ioane, Patrick Tuipulotu is running a short line into space on the inside shoulder of Pablo Matera — who has to be aware of Jordan, Sam Cane and Codie Taylor attacking his outside shoulder, with only wing Ramiro Moyano for company.
Ioane reads Matera’s reluctance to jam in on Tuipulotu well, and sends the second row through the gap with a beautiful pass off his left hand:
With Ioane working hard to follow his pass and offer a support option on the inside after the break, the Blues captain gallops home.
Quick hits
Alongside the experience of veterans like Josh Hohneck, Ash Dixon and Liam Messam, Maori All Blacks head coach Clayton McMillan has blooded a number of uncapped players in his matchday squad for Saturday’s game against Moana Pasifika. Manaaki Selby-Rickit will debut in the second row, while Kurt Eklund, Tamaiti Williams and Ethan Roots will come off the bench in the forwards; in the backline, Quinn Tupaea and Billy Proctor will reprise their centre combination from the 2019 World Rugby U20 Championship — with Tupaea’s former Hamilton BHS teammate Rameka Poihipi available in relief in the 22 shirt — and Chiefs playmaker Kaleb Trask will start at fullback.
On the Moana Pasifika side, Fa’alogo Tana Umaga has named a box-office back division to run on at FMG Stadium Waikato. Highlanders teammates Folau Fakatava and Josh Ioane start in the halves, Vince Aso and Fetuli Paea combine in the centres and Salesi Rayasi, Leicester Fainga’anuku and Stephen Perofeta make up the back three — with Dwayne Polataivao, Asaeli Tikoirotuma and Taimalelagia Etene Nanai-Seturo on the bench.
The Red Bull Ignite7 draft took place in Mount Maunganui on Monday night, and the 8 finalised squads for this weekend’s tournament include a number of enticing combinations. The Bolt Women added Dhys Faleafaga — who was dominant in the Farah Palmer Cup for Wellington — and the powerful ball-carrier should provide a nice foil for the industry of Ruby Tui and the gas of Stacey Fluhler. The Inferno Women will be exciting to watch too: combining Gayle Broughton, Tenika Willison and Rosie Kelly with captains Tyla Nathan-Wong and Theresa Fitzpatrick gives them a surfeit of playmaking talent.
Suzanne McFadden concluded her ‘From Here to Maternity’ series for LockerRoom with an interview with former Black Sticks captain Kayla Whitelock, who is aiming to go to a fifth Olympics in Tokyo next year after starting a family with husband and former All Black George Whitelock. She spoke to McFadden at length — along with a number of other female athletes, including former Black Ferns captain Les Elder — about coming back to top-level sport after giving birth.
Finally, if you can’t wait for Super Rugby Aotearoa to kick off again either, there is plenty more signing day content on social media. On Facebook, the Crusaders have some clips with Scott Robertson and their new signings; on YouTube, the Highlanders put Tony Brown and Liam Squire in front of the media, while the Blues and Chiefs also introduced fans to some of their new players.
This will be the final edition of The Tip-On for 2020 — thanks to everyone who’s been reading the newsletter this year.
It’ll be back (likely with a few tweaks) at the start of next season. In the meantime, any comments or feedback (positive or negative!) are more than welcome.