The All Blacks underwent a major personnel change after the 2023 World Cup, leading to unrest.
Scott Robertson’s coaching team is now set, with Scott Barrett and Scott Hansen as key figures.
2025 is expected to see a more radical selection approach, with potential new players like Simon Parker.
Revolutions are often misunderstood in that, in the modern age at least, they tend to have two distinct parts.
Stage one sees the clean-out of the existing power, which is typically followed by a period of civil and political unrest from which stage two begins and ends witha new, dominant force taking control.
Having seen the way the All Blacks trundled through 2024 without any distinct new sense of identity or an obviously revamped strategic blueprint or even much of a personnel refresh under the newly appointed Scott Robertson, perhaps it’s the case that the promised revolution was enduring a prolonged first stage.
The All Blacks’ story has certainly followed a revolutionary path in that there was a seismic clean-out of personnel after the 2023 World Cup – a grand toppling of the previous regime that felt brutal and public in the way so many lost their jobs, and lost them while they were still in them.
And then came the period of unrest, the uncertainty in the aftermath of the blood-letting that saw Robertson suffer upheaval in his own coaching team when assistant Leon MacDonald quit after five tests.
There was also an at-times bitter and toxic battle between warring factions trying to amend New Zealand Rugby’s (NZR) constitution to change the way directors were appointed.
Last year was turbulent and there was an air of volatility about the All Blacks in their chop-and-change selections (Robertson was unable to commit to Damian McKenzie as chief playmaker), their up-and-down performances, and their failure to deliver a transformational brand of rugby that was cohesive and enlightened.
Damian McKenzie was given sporadic opportunities at first five-eighths last year. Photo / Photosport
If there was a revolutionary tactical blueprint, a bright new vision for how players are presented to the public and an intent to unearth a cohort of emerging superstars, it never materialised amid the constant upheaval.
But 2025 should be the year that stage two of the revolution begins. Robertson now has his coaching team set up how he wants and with MacDonald gone, there is no longer ambiguity about the axis of power and who is playing Trotsky to his Lenin.
The power base has been established inside the team and so too has it been fortified within NZR.
In February, a significantly more competent and focused board of directors, led by former All Blacks captain David Kirk, took their seats. They made their presence immediately felt by getting chief executive Mark Robinson to publicly align Robertson with the eligibility policy. This effectively ended what was increasingly being seen as less of a broadly principled quest to update a no longer fit-for-purpose law regime and more a thinly disguised attempt to bend the rules to select the Japan-based Richie Mo’unga.
The greater stability in the wider rugby landscape and the confidence that may have grown within Robertson and his coaching team because of that greater stability could potentially see stage two of the revolution begin with a more radical lens applied to selection this year.
Super Rugby Pacific has shifted into the playoffs to provide a more intense environment. Perhaps Robertson will be using these next few weeks to decide whether there is room in his 35-man squad for new players and, indeed, whether there are some potential unexpected twists in the way some already identified talents could be utilised.
Top of the list as a possible new cap will be Chiefs loose forward Simon Parker, whose work this season has been unmissable. He may well be the thundering big lump the All Blacks are constantly hunting for. At 1.97m and 117kg, he’s a unique beast in New Zealand.
Athletes of these dimensions roam all over Europe, but in New Zealand it is rare to find someone of this size capable of playing in the back row and able to live with the high-paced, aerobic demands of Super Rugby.
Parker may be the player the All Blacks can develop into becoming their version of South Africa’s Pieter-Steph du Toit – a feat which would effectively be revolutionary in itself.
As a positional twist, perhaps these next few weeks could provide reason for Robertson to double down on using Ruben Love as a wing in the test arena.
The 24-year-old won his solitary cap playing on the right wing last year (after running at fullback for the Hurricanes) and has this season shown himself to be a more than capable first five-eighths. Is Love the sort of multi-skilled allrounder the All Blacks could park in the No 14 jersey to replace the departing Mark Tele’a and give themselves three playmakers on the field at any one time?
As revolutionary concepts go, having two natural No 10s in the back three is as radical as they come and would align strongly with Robertson’s desire to have his All Blacks play a sweeping style of rugby based on the accuracy of their pass and catch.
The revolution did begin last year, just not in the way everyone expected or wanted. But this year, the people need to see what they thought they were going to get in 2024 – a new-look All Blacks team that justified the decision to topple the previous regime.
