Gregor Paul: The unseen threats to continued All Blacks dominance

There's an almost unbreakable conviction that the defining challenge facing the All Blacks in 2021 will be the two tests against the Springboks.

Such is the perceived threat posed by the Boks, New Zealand Rugby's board were intending to delay making a decision about whether to reappoint the current coaching team until after those games had been played.

It is thought they wanted to hang everything on those two encounters – determine the capability of this All Blacks coaching group almost exclusively on how they dealt with the Springboks.

This almost compulsive need to accentuate the importance of these two tests is hard to understand given the historic results between New Zealand and South Africa which has seen the latter win just twice since 2012, but it has also blinded many from seeing that there are more significant rugby challenges to be faced.

The single toughest test match for the All Blacks will be the one against France in Paris to finish their season.

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The French are a team on the rise having reconnected with their Gallic selves in the last two years and goodness only knows what sort of mental and physical state the All Blacks will be in by the time they meet.

The game in Paris will be the 10th and final test of the All Blacks 14-week tour and the French, who haven't beaten New Zealand since 2009, will know they may not have a better chance to break their drought.

Facing France in Paris, at the end of a long tour, should be no background threat for the All Blacks. Photo / Photosport

They also know that they kick off their 2023 World Cup campaign as hosts on the same ground against the same team and for all that international coaches play down the psychological value of one-off victories as valid currency, it would be naïve not to believe a young, ambitious French team wouldn't flood with confidence and become yet more dangerous should they beat the All Blacks this year.

It would, therefore, be ill-advised for anyone to go all cock-a-hoop and make definitive conclusions about the national team should they beat the Boks twice.

But what's possibly being missed entirely is that there are two more enduring battles that will have to be fought – both of which will test the patience and diplomacy of coach Ian Foster and could ultimately prove debilitating.

The first is that Foster, in the next few months, will have to manage the inevitable increased friction between the players and their employer.

The reason friction is inevitable is that the offer from US equity firm Silver Lake to buy a 12.5 per stake in NZR's future revenue is going to have to be resolved.

Silver Lake's offer has been the most divisive issue in the sport since the 1981 Springboks tour.

The private equity group have the full support of the NZR board and the provincial unions, but the New Zealand Rugby Players' Association have multiple concerns - ideological, cultural, ethical, financial - about the prospect of doing a deal with Silver Lake.

For a period earlier this year, relations between the players and NZR soured as the former refused to budge from their view that the deal would not best serve all stakeholders in the game because it came with what was an eternal, punitive element where a share of income would be lost in perpetuity.

The aggressive stance taken by NZR's executive and some of the comments that were made about the players' motives created genuine distrust and hurt which has caused permanent scarring in the relationship between this country's leading All Blacks and the national body's board.

The All Blacks coaching team were put in a compromising position during the spat – answerable to and paid by the executive yet responsible for and loyal to the players.

The Silver Lake talks were effectively put on hold in early June, partly because a new chair – Stewart Mitchell - was appointed to the NZR board and partly because other business such as resolving Super Rugby's future became more pressing.

But discussions will resume and many of the leading All Blacks such as Sam Cane, Sam Whitelock, Dane Coles, Aaron Smith and Patrick Tuipulotu will be heavily engaged and the last thing the All Blacks can afford while they embark on their 10-test tour, is for a resumption of hostilities with their employer.

Sam Cane stands to be bearing a lot more than just the All Blacks captaincy on his shoulders in the coming year. Photo/ Photosport

Foster must find a way to let the players engage in something that is important to them without letting it become a distraction.

But 2022, regardless of what happens with any private equity investment, will also see agreements with new sponsors Altrad and Ineos kick-in and most likely increase the volume of commercial demands made of the players.

NZR has closed two colossal deals that will see sponsorship income from real estate on the kit jump from $12m a year to about $30m next year.

The unknown, however, is what has been promised to new sponsors Ineos and Altrad in return for their investment and there are fears that the line between high performance and commercial needs could become blurred.

NZR's losses were mounting long before Covid ripped a hole in the balance sheet and as such the need to squeeze more dollars out of the All Blacks, the national body's one cash cow, has intensified.

Balancing increased demands to do more for commercial partners, while ensuring the players have enough time to train and prepare became increasingly fraught in 2018 and 2019 and assuming Covid restrictions lift, could become harder again in 2022 especially with new partners on board.