Scott Robertson will rely heavily on data analysis in naming his All Blacks squad next week. Photo / SmartFrame
Scott Robertson will rely heavily on data analysis in naming his All Blacks squad next week. Photo / SmartFrame
THE FACTS
In 2009, All Blacks coaches shared a media box, revealing Sir Graham Henry’s preference for intuition over data.
The digitalisation of rugby has shifted focus to statistical analysis, impacting selectors’ confidence in trusting their instincts.
Current selectors, like Scott Robertson, balance data with gut feel, especially when assessing players such as George Bower and Ethan Blackadder.
In 2009, when Eden Park was being revamped, it resulted in a short period where the All Blacks coaches had to share space with the media in what was grandly called a temporary media box but was actually a shipping container perched precariously on scaffolding.
This curious arrangementmeant the media, who were side-by-side with the men picking the All Blacks as they analysed the last few weeks of Super Rugby, had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how the selection group went about their business.
And maybe the most telling discovery was the way head coach Sir Graham Henry had little to no interest in the bank of laptops that his analysts were poring over, and fixed his eyes firmly on the field, certain it seemed that he had significantly more to learn by scanning the vast expanse of green than he did peering into the 14 inches of LCD spitting out performance stats and real-time footage of what was occurring at the heart of each ruck.
Henry, having learned his coaching craft in the analogue age, was almost a metaphoric Jedi Knight by 2009 – an old school figure who trusted his gut to interpret what was transpiring in front of him.
History says he was right to feel that way as his intuition about players and his ability to judge them with nothing but his naked eye was remarkable.
Henry, though, was probably the last selection Jedi New Zealand has known, although his All Blacks successor, Steve Hansen was more inclined to trust his gut than he was to pop on the reading specs and wade through the numbers telling him how many tackles an individual may have made and off what shoulder.
Henry’s analogue age has long gone and these days when the TV cameras focus on the Super Rugby Pacific coaching boxes, there is an army of people sitting behind laptops, frantically reviewing each play, wading through the live stats, searching for clues about what may be really happening.
Player movements are tracked in detail in the modern age. Photo / Photosport
Advanced software programs linked to GPS trackers embedded in the players’ jerseys can tell coaches just about everything – passes made and off what hand, rucks hit, turnovers made, penalties conceded, defenders beaten, lineouts stolen, scrums won.
But this alliance between coaches and their devices is illustrative of how the digitalisation of rugby has eroded confidence in selectors trusting their gut.
It has possibly even persuaded them that the numbers are the best, and in some cases, only means to tell the real story about players.
All Blacks coach Scott Robertson and his fellow selectors are all products of the modern Super Rugby environment and therefore used to incorporating deep-dive statistical analysis into their opinion-forming process.
But as they prepare to finalise their first All Blacks squad of the year, it would be interesting to know the precise nature of their relationship with data and how much it has influenced their thinking about various players.
Where does the balance lie between trusting what they can see and weighing that up against what the stats tell them?
It’s a fascinating question because the past few weeks have surely told them that Crusaders prop George Bower has earned a recall if there is room in the mix for a third loosehead.
Bower, in partnership with Fletcher Newell, set about destroying the Blues scrum in last week’s semifinal and in the process, presumably killed the prospect of Joshua Fusitu’a becoming an All Black this year.
The Blues youngster has had a strong 2025, but no matter what the stats say about his discipline and scrummaging ability, the picture presented in Christchurch last Friday was of someone not yet ready to play international rugby.
Gut feel should also have confirmed that Ethan Blackadder is the closest thing New Zealand has to an old-school, hard-hitting, destructive blindside.
His numbers would presumably confirm what the eye sees, which is that he’s the most committed loose forward New Zealand has produced since Richie McCaw retired, and that he has the work rate and energy to show up everywhere.
And gut feel should also have sensed that Samipeni Finau continues to be a player who can’t quite package his physicality to sit neatly within the bounds of the laws.
In the big games, he’s shown himself to still be prone to acts of ill-discipline and the All Blacks need to make a big shift this year towards cleaning up their act – not as it pertains to foul play but in their accuracy in the collision zones.
A harder problem for the selectors to solve will be in determining how to decipher what the statistics have told them about the respective merits of Du Plessis Kirifi, Peter Lakai and Dalton Papali’i, against what they have deduced from their own broader observations.
Watching Lakai, he looks like he has an instinct to read the game and be where he needs to be, and while it is probable that his stats in all the key metrics will be down on last year, he feels like he’s worthy of a long-term investment by the All Blacks.
Kirifi is another who just seems to be a player of influence naturally and while he’s arguably comparatively small for an aspiring international openside, he does present as someone who could play a similar role for the All Blacks as that which Kwagga Smith does for the Springboks, and come off the bench late in the game with a mandate to win a couple of key turnovers.
And it’s gut feel that should lead the selectors to pick Chiefs wings Emoni Narawa and Leroy Carter.
Of all the positions where it feels like performance statistics don’t align with gut feel, wing is where the divergence is greatest.
There is a pointlessness to measuring how many run-metres back-three players clock – half of them are gained when they field a kick and carry it 20m or so before they meet a defender.
What matters more is that Narawa has been an electric and unmissable force for the Chiefs. He beats defenders when they are right on him and he has that rare ability to make something happen when others wouldn’t be able to.
And Carter has shown himself to be alive to opportunity, capable of exploiting it when he sees it and whatever his defensive stats say, it feels like no opponent this year has been able to get around him or through him.
