Coach Scott Robertson believes in an expansive, high-speed game, but evidence suggests limitations in execution.
There’s debate on whether style or substance matters more to fans and the team’s identity.
Perhaps, now that the All Blacks are proving to be unexpectedly adept at playing low-risk rugby, it’s time for them to question their self-determined belief that they are obliged to entertain as much as they are to win.
It has been built into the wider narrative that NewZealanders hold a profound sense of self that they expect to see reflected in the way the All Blacks play.
Winning isn’t enough for the All Blacks, they have to produce a game plan that conforms to some self-determined sense of national identity that is built around vague concepts of the pioneering spirit and No 8 wire innovations.
It’s a heavy burden to carry. South Africa can turn up with a massive scrum, boot the leather off the ball and drop goals from anywhere, whereas the All Blacks feel this compulsion to weave intricate attacking patterns, show they can catch, pass and run and not only win every game they play, but also capture the hearts and minds of the paying public.
The All Blacks have knocked themselves out of World Cups and lost major tests because they have deemed a drop goal beneath them – an ignoble and disdainful way to get the job done – and this relentless obsession with style must be exhausting.
They are the self-styled campus intellectual, always wanting to be seen reading Crime and Punishment – or some other impenetrable literary tome – when everyone else sticks on Netflix and zones out to Love Island.
But why do the All Blacks feel this pressure? Do New Zealanders really care about the way the All Blacks play as much as the All Blacks think they do?
Or are Kiwis just like everyone else, and indifferent to the style because the substance is all that matters?
Is winning rugby the only style they care about, and would the game really lose traction and erode its support base if Codie Taylor and Samisoni Taukei’aho top the try-scoring charts at the end of an unbeaten season?
Samisoni Taukei'aho is brought down by Guido Petit in Cordoba. Photo / Photosport
Would it be joyless and unrewarding to see the All Blacks conquer the world with an exclusively muscular brand of rugby that risked little?
This is a valid debate as the All Blacks appear to be in the midst of an identity crisis – trying to sell themselves as the masters of fast and furious, high-skilled running rugby, when everyone can see that they have looked an infinitely better side when they have stuck the ball at the back of a maul and barged over the line.
All Blacks coach Scott Robertson is adamant his team’s natural strength and point of difference is the speed at which they can play an accurate, highly skilled pass-and-run game.
He’s confident that an expansive strategy that keeps the ball alive aligns with the skillsets and aerobic capabilities of his athletes.
And perhaps in time he will be proven right. But increasingly, with the exception of Will Jordan, evidence is building to say that the All Blacks don’t have the individual firepower or set-play blueprints they need to bring Robertson’s vision to life.
Rieko Ioane is struggling to adjust back to the wing, Sevu Reece is a sharp, short-range finisher but doesn’t pose the all-round threat to worry defences when he runs from deep, and Billy Proctor is finding it hard to make his natural game work in combination with Jordie Barrett.
Most Kiwis likely see entertainment as being synonymous with accuracy and given the choice between seeing the All Blacks flawlessly execute a lineout take and form the perfect driving maul, against seeing the backs buzz about with little direction or certainty about what they are doing, as happened too frequently in Cordoba, it seems a no-brainer as to which option New Zealanders would prefer.
But this whole question of style runs yet deeper still because this desire to be seen as the game’s great entertainers may have commercial as well as strategic roots.
It’s possible that Robertson is feeling subliminal pressure from New Zealand Rugby to have his All Blacks play a brand of rugby that captures the imagination of neutral fans.
The All Blacks are on a mission to win foreign support – to position themselves as the second-favourite team of every rugby follower who is not a New Zealander – and maybe no one thinks that will happen if the rugby is all scrum penalties and driving mauls.
Later this year, the All Blacks will be in Chicago, hoping to not just beat Ireland, but to do so in a manner which leaves the US fans spellbound.
Will it really be mission complete if the All Blacks win 9-6 and Jordan doesn’t touch the ball?
The Rugby Championship, therefore, is certainly shaping as a test of Robertson’s conviction in both his strategic vision and also his confidence in various players to fulfil it.
