Caleb Clarke and Noah Lolesio. Photos / Getty Images
Caleb Clarke and Noah Lolesio. Photos / Getty Images
OPINION:
With four new caps in the All Blacks team for the final Bledisloe test, we will find out whether they have so far just been lucky that their various debutants keep managing to play the house down.
It's important to know whether it's good luck or good management whichhas enabled the All Blacks this year to throw the likes of Caleb Clarke, Tupou Vaa'i and Hoskins Sotutu into test football and see all three make an immediate impact.
Clarke, especially, at just 21 was able to take his impressive Super Rugby form and transfer it to the test arena without a hint of intimidation. He's played a whole season of good football, but the peak came in his first two test appearances which is unusual.
It's the same with Vaa'i who was solid with the Chiefs and then played the best game of his career when he made his first start for the All Blacks at Eden Park.
Young, inexperienced players don't typically take their game to new levels of excellence on test debut. It's more often the case that nerves and the weight of the occasion get to them and they plot a mostly forgettable path through the 80 minutes but are all the better for the experience.
Caleb Clarke during the second Bledisloe Cup test at Eden Park. Photo / Photosport
Occasionally some players luck out on debut, the game goes their way, they start well and go on to make a big impact.
But the various All Blacks coaching teams of the last 15 years or so became cognisant of the more common phenomenon of youngsters clamming up and not being able to reproduce for the All Blacks the form they had shown in Super Rugby.
It became a source of consternation that these whiz kids would demand selection by dominating Super Rugby, only to then doubt themselves once they were actually picked.
Some of it, the coaches reasoned, was down to the culture of the environment where there was a pay your dues vibe that left newcomers feeling on edge, unwanted and not respected.
Caleb Clarke and Noah Lolesio. Photos / Getty Images
Finding the key to immediately unleashing the value of young, uncapped players has been something that the All Blacks have been searching for in the last decade.
It's been a constant battle for them – trying to find ways to bring in new players and persuade them they are good enough to be there all without overhyping them to the extent they become over confident.
It's a battle that it looks like they are now winning: one that they may now be starting to find answers to as last year Sevu Reece and George Bridge were able to replicate their Crusaders form the instant they were given the respective wing berths for the All Blacks.
And so far this year we have seen Clarke, Vaa'i and Sotutu step up and contribute despite having so little experience.
The value of this is significant and best understood in comparing it with what's happened with the Wallabies.
In Sydney, coach Dave Rennie gave debuts to Noah Lolesio and Irae Simone – neither of whom looked at all settled at this level. Lolesio in particular played with a nervousness and angst that made him a liability.
Noah Lolesio had a tough debut in Sydney - despite scoring. Photo Getty Images
It wasn't that he had a quiet debut, he had a negative-impact debut and his inability to get anywhere near replicating his Super Rugby form damaged the Wallabies.
Based on events so far, there is enough evidence to believe that it is easier for new players to come into the All Blacks and make an immediate positive impact than it is for their Wallaby counterparts to do the same.
And given the evidence, it's also apparent that is happening not by good luck but by good management, although of course all this will be tested in Brisbane when Akira Ioane, Asafo Aumua, Cullen Grace and Will Jordan will play their first tests.
The All Blacks have taken a degree of risk by stacking their bench with three uncapped players, who given the recent history of tests at Suncorp, may find themselves injected into a tight and tense situation.
But at the moment, that doesn't scare the All Blacks the way it used to. They have a new found confidence in their ability to throw new men into the heat of battle and get them to perform.
