The omission of Blues No 8 Hoskins Sotutu, after a good season in Super Rugby Pacific, was a sign the question marks that led to his axing from the All Blacks at the end of 2022 remain in the current selectors’ minds.
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He started just seven of his 14 tests in three seasons from 2020, facing the huge roadblock of Ardie Savea taking over the No 8 jersey.
Sotutu’s exclusion from the All Blacks frame in 2023 was based on how hard he found the struggle to make his running game, defensive work and his impact at the breakdown more physically potent.
All Blacks coach Robertson has said picking the loose forwards in the 2024 squad was the most demanding and lengthy task for him and his selectors.
A lot of that time would surely have been spent considering a possible Sotutu comeback. At 25, Sotutu, his game expanding under Vern Cotter at the Blues, must decide now whether to keep pursuing more time as an All Blacks player. Missing out on the first squad of the year may not be the end of the road for him.
Newcomers show promise
“You can’t keep all the old guys, but you can’t get rid of all the old guys. You have to have that experience to win tests,” Sir Steve Hansen, 2015 World Cup-winning All Blacks coach.
In a country where questioning All Blacks selections is basically a national hobby, the fact Robertson and his selectors picked only five newcomers puzzled some who expected a more radical new broom.
But even the most golden influx of new caps, the intake in 2012 of nine rookies, including Aaron Smith, Beauden Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Julian Savea and Dane Coles, saw just three, Savea, Smith, and Retallick, start the first test of that year, against Ireland.
Yes, there’s some huge promise in the shape of 2024 new boys, such as Wallace Sititi, Cortez Ratima, and Pasilio Tosi, but there would have been just as much satisfaction for the selectors in being able to name a revived Patrick Tuipulotu to give the middle row the hard experience 43 tests have drilled into the inspirational Blues’ captain.
No surprise in captain
All Blacks captaincy will always be a hugely demanding job. After the coach, the next head sought if the team is struggling is always the captain. Just ask Sam Cane.
Experience in leadership is always a plus, and so is a close relationship between coach and skipper.
The choice of Scott Barrett, who Robertson coached at the Crusaders for seven seasons was ultimately as inevitable as Winston Peters lecturing a media scrum at the Beehive.
But if a new captain is needed at some point it doesn’t have to mean anything like disaster.
When Laurie Mains took over coaching the All Blacks in 1992, one of our great All Blacks captains, Auckland’s Sean Fitzpatrick, was not Mains’ first choice as leader.
Mains made no secret of the fact he planned to appoint his Otago captain, Mike Brewer, as his All Blacks skipper. “There was no need for a lot of chit-chat between us,” Mains said, “because there’s no BS involved.”
But Brewer badly tore a calf muscle in the second half of the main All Blacks trial in April of 1992, and Fitzpatrick would lead the team for the next seven years.
The fact Mains admired Fitzpatrick as a fierce competitor was not only a help, but also slightly remarkable, considering Mains regarded most Auckland players with innate southern suspicion.
The first time Mains had his squad together he told them he understood cliques had formed in the 1991 World Cup team that led to the side’s failure to make the final.
Feel free to stick together in provincial groups, was his basic message, but don’t expect to stay in the All Blacks if you do. Nobody from Auckland could recall him looking at anyone from Canterbury or Wellington at the time.
Give them time
As the season wears on, if there are some tough times, and some harsh criticism for Robertson and his coaching team, let me offer some words of wisdom from Alex “Grizz” Wyllie, an assistant coach at the 1987 World Cup, and co-coach at the 1991 Cup.
“It’s okay for you guys in the media,” Wyllie once said to me. “Your teams don’t have to play.”
