Wallabies head coach Dave Rennie ahead of the first Bledisloe Cup clash in Wellington. Photo / Photosport
Wallabies head coach Dave Rennie ahead of the first Bledisloe Cup clash in Wellington. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
The Chiefs didn't just win Super Rugby titles under the coaching of Dave Rennie, they also won a reputation among their peers as a team that liked to play opponents off the ball.
When they were cleaning up in 2012 and 2013, the Chiefs pack was supremely well-drilled, aggressive,and, as is becoming clear now, apparently notorious for their intent to niggle and frustrate opponents with quasi-legal antics that were designed to intimidate and infuriate.
It was all part of the Rennie coaching package, the means by which he turned the competition's great underachiever into champions, but it didn't win the Chiefs a lot of friends in the wider rugby fraternity.
There was respect for them among the four other teams, but it appears now it was more grudging than anything else.
It appears that there was admiration for much of what they did under Rennie, but not all of what they did and Crusaders prop Joe Moody said earlier this year: "I've always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder with the Chiefs".
Brodie Retallick, Sonny Bill Williams and Sam Cane after winning the 2012 Super Rugby final. Photo / Photosport
Dane Coles, somewhat more tactfully, said earlier this week that he felt he saw strong shades of the Chiefs from the Wallabies in Wellington, especially in the tackled ball area.
He suggested Rennie was the master at creating "ruck chaos" and that he could see some of Chiefs lock Brodie Retallick in the way the Wallabies played at Sky Stadium.
"Big Guzzler [Retallick] coming in and taking guys off the ball and stuff like that. Yeah we felt that. He [Rennie] has a good understanding of how to create chaos at the ruck - we have seen that before in the teams that he has coached in New Zealand, so he's making his mark felt," Coles said.
Retallick who is famed for the collateral damage he causes at breakdowns. When he returned to the All Blacks last year at the World Cup after a seven-week layoff, his teammates knew he was ready to play because he was "being a giant prick" at training.
Aaron Smith said that having Retallick back had brought a missing edge to things – that the little halfback was now being shoved over at training after he'd passed the ball; that he had to be wary of a giant Retallick boot slipping through a throng of bodies to come down on his hand.
Retallick is perhaps the best graduate to come out of the Rennie era at the Chiefs. Certainly he and Sam Cane became the rugged, abrasive world-class forwards they now are thanks to the start they got at the Chiefs under Rennie and this is why things are so fascinating and delicate now.
Last year New Zealand celebrated the return of Retallick and all the niggle and edge that he brings. That same mindset of wanting to intimidate opponents resides within Cane, too and New Zealand and the All Blacks benefited enormously from the coaching talents of Rennie and the psychology he helped instil within his players.
Rennie's fingerprints are as much over the All Blacks squad as they are the Wallabies, which has created an awkward dynamic in the days following the 16-all draw in Wellington.
All Blacks assistant coach John Plumtree on Wednesday made a direct plea to this week's match officials to do a better job of dealing with the off-the-ball carnage he felt the Wallabies were guilty of inflicting in the capital.
He was clear that a number of senior All Blacks are fired up that there were several late charges that were ignored by the officials and equally direct in his assertion that his team didn't have the same intent to play off the ball as the Wallabies.
All Blacks assistant coach John Plumtree wants officials to better police the off-the-ball stuff in the second Bledisloe Cup test. Photo / Photosport
All of this could be written off as run of the mill Bledisloe coaching blather – typical of the mind games that are played in the midst of a tense and finely poised series.
But it comes with this subtext, suggesting that everyone in the All Blacks collectively groaned and despaired when they were proven right on Sunday that Rennie would indeed adopt many of the aspects he instilled within the Chiefs that made them so unpopular among their peers between 2012 and 2017.
The Chiefs players in the All Blacks squad may be feeling wary about the ongoing insinuations that they were part of something a little cheap and nasty, when it is in fact the values, qualities and skills that they developed under Rennie which won them international selection in the first place.
