The All Blacks beat France 29-19 in Hamilton on Saturday night.
The result completed a clean sweep of the three-test series.
Coach Scott Robertson’s selection changes aimed to build depth, though Damian McKenzie still needs to prove his game management.
It was a series clean sweep in the end, but not one achieved with a strong, purposeful performance to generate an abundance of confidence about what lies ahead.
The All Blacks’ third win of the series against France – a 29-19 result claimed on a cold night inHamilton – almost perfectly met the definition of laboured.
It was a long, slow, quite painful grind for the All Blacks, who never really found their groove or any deep connection with one another.
It would be unfair to call Saturday’s performance insipid, but it was kind of bland: a vanilla performance that didn’t have much other than graft and tenacity to make it memorable, and a heroic performance by captain Ardie Savea, a big scrummaging shift from the tight five and a strong cameo from Jordie Barrett.
Not that graft and courage should be written off. To guts it out with an inexperienced team that were, as Savea said, “punched in the nose in the first half”, took a depth of character and patience.
But the All Blacks set their bar higher than that and there was no real sense that Damian McKenzie took control of the game, nor any real flow to an attack whose best moments came from opportunism rather than any prolonged set-up.
A bit like the first test, the French looked like they were well-cooked midway through the second half – and yet they were able to defend for an age, scrambling and scrapping against an All Blacks side that lacked the potency and accuracy needed to cut them open and put them out of their misery.
Fabian Holland takes a clean lineout ball in for the All Blacks in the test against France in Hamilton. Photo / Alyse Wright
And that’s what will be a little concerning for the All Blacks: they haven’t shown the sort of inherent understanding of their attack patterns yet defines the best teams.
When Ireland came out to New Zealand in 2022, they showed what can be achieved when a team instinctively and readily understands their own game and runs through their repertoire with a natural ease that stretches and breaks defences.
There was no sign of that in Hamilton, maybe understandably, given the volume of selection changes made from the previous week, or maybe because their game plan is not yet deeply ingrained.
Tougher tests lie ahead to get a better gauge on where the truth lies, but to some extent, the volume of changes the All Blacks made does provide some kind of explanation for the regression from the previous week.
Change on that scale does require readjustment – but it would be unfair to laud Robertson pre-game for aligning his selection policy with the overall aim of growing the depth of experience and ability of the squad, and to then chastise for him for doing so when the performance wasn’t polished or emphatic.
It’s not possible to have it both ways – and this is the point of risk-reward scenarios: they come with risk.
If the All Blacks are going to win consistently at the level they desire – maintaining their historic baseline of 75% – then they have to be able to trust McKenzie to be able to run the game.
Robertson suggested that both McKenzie and Ruben Love will look back on the game and have a few thoughts on how they may have done things differently – particularly as it relates to their back-field work and respective kicking strategies.
They have to know whether Quinn Tupaea can be a high-functioning, multi-skilled second five-eighths in the Jordie Barrett mould, and they have to build a seemingly inordinate supply of loose forwards who can slip into the starting team at late notice, just as Du’Plessis Kirifi had to when Luke Jacobson pulled out 15 minutes before kickoff.
Jordie Barrett had a powerful impact off the bench for the All Blacks against France in Hamilton. Photo / Alyse Wright
If the All Blacks can deepen their talent pool, they can pick a higher-quality bench for the biggest games and start developing their own bomb squad.
They can cover injuries to big-name players and they can start building a squad that can head off to Australia in 2027 with a degree of confidence about what they will be able to do when they get there.
So, the risk Robertson took in making 10 changes for this encounter in Hamilton was entirely justified and appropriate and he got answers to most of his key questions.
McKenzie still doesn’t quite convince as a game manager at this level, but he’s the best and maybe only alternative option the All Blacks have to develop.
Jordie Barrett came on and did a better impression of himself than Tupaea managed but the latter is a project in whom the All Blacks should invest for the long term. He was busy and bustling and when the All Blacks needed a straight runner to take the gainline, he dutifully obliged.
And Kirifi and Samipeni Finau stayed on task – the former all over the breakdown as he always is and the latter a willing bash-and-smash man. Finau might not be in the same league as Tupou Vaa’i, but he did enough to suggest he’s worth keeping for the Rugby Championship.
It may take some time for the real value of the Hamilton performance to sink in, but Robertson was clearly buoyed by the way his side found a way to get in front and the way the set piece stayed so strong to the death, winning penalties.
“It is critical,” he said. “It is a massive factor we learned last year the other way. Everything we have asked for and trained for.
“We have got to get that balance right. Sometimes we over play and sometimes we underplay with our kicking.
“We will be better for the experience as a group. We were 10 points down at one stage and we found a way. We played some good footy. We are better for it.”
