All Blacks Brodie Retallick, Vaea Fifita and Sonny Bill Williams. Photo / Photosport
COMMENT:
Competitive tension is normally a key driver of performance within the All Blacks, but in this pre-World phase of the season, it's wrapping itself a little too tightly around some players.
It has morphed from enabler to inhibitor and it is apparent even now, four weeks and three tests before the World Cup squad of 31 is announced, that a few players have already shown they can't cope with the heightened need to deliver to survive.
The World Cup, with billions watching and a nation expecting brings one kind of pressure, but being in an extended reality TV-style audition to make the World Cup, brings an entirely different sort.
It is obvious that, with 39 players in the current squad and another two in Ryan Crotty and Scott Barrett waiting to return from injury, some players are seeing demons everywhere they look.
This is a generation brought up after all on elimination shows and, with only 31 going to Japan, some minds are already fast-forwarding to the moment coach Steve Hansen is standing in front of the group, all dramatic pauses and ill-timed ad breaks waiting to call their name and tell them to step forward.
It's not that Hansen wants to create an environment of fear and apprehension – for every player to be anxious about their World Cup prospects – but he does want there to be a healthy tension.
He wants everyone, from the uncapped Josh Ioane to captain Kieran Read, to be uncomfortable about their place and for that nervous energy to simmer because it serves as a window into the psyche of his players.
"There is a lot of competition," Hansen noted on Thursday. "You are not human if you are not thinking about the end goal of getting to a World Cup.
"So there is a lot of nervousness around that and it is interesting to watch how people are coping with that."
His inference is that not everyone is dealing with competition overly well and that it is helping him and his fellow selectors firm their opinions about who might be facing the chop.
He sees his players in training, at team meetings and interact with their peers – all of which provides clues as to their mental make-up and evidence of how they are handling
- or not - the intensity of the competition.
The team picked to play South Africa potentially reflects that some decisions may already have been made. Some players may now have sealed their fate while others are barely hanging on.
Probably the first to play his way out of contention was Patrick Tuipulotu.
He went to Buenos Aires last week knowing he had to deliver a high-impact, bruising performance that gave the selectors reason to keep considering the prospect of taking four locks to Japan.
They needed to see urgency, desperation even, and Tuipulotu thundering around crunching over the top of tacklers. His big moment to impress came and he let it drift by.
He didn't have a means to force himself into the game, to find a way to be influential and it really did look like he was gripped by the fear of failure, that he was overwhelmed by the need to prove himself.
Tuipulotu may, given the injury to Scott Barrett, feature in the Bledisloe Cup, but if he was really in contention he and not Vaea Fifita would be on the bench against the Springboks.
Not that Fifita took his chance particularly well in Argentina either, but he did so more obviously than Tuipulotu and hence you suspect now that if the selectors are to be persuaded to take a fourth lock it will be a utility option such as Fifita or Jackson Hemopo who can also play in the loose forwards.
If Fifita is going to take that role in Japan, then he'll need to deliver something compelling against the Boks should he come off the bench.
He didn't give the relentlessly physical and controlled performance the selectors asked for.
He was a bit wild, frantic even and if competitive tension tied Tuipulotu in knots and saw him freeze, it lit a fire within Fifita, but one which raged too far.
The All Blacks wanted urgency and aggression but also accuracy and if there is no sign of it in Wellington, Fifita, could be the next victim.
There is this sense building that Fifita and indeed Shannon Frizell, who will start at blindside against the Springboks, are under more pressure than others as Hansen has hinted strongly that the All Blacks are veering towards a best players on the park policy for the World Cup.
He's shown by selecting Beauden Barrett at fullback that players will be asked to play out of position to accommodate others who bring skills the coaches feel they can't afford to not have on the field from the start of a test.
The next phase of that policy could be to revert Read to blindside to allow Ardie Savea to start a test at No 8.
Savea offers so much that it is unthinkable almost that the All Blacks would restrict his involvement to 20 minutes or so off the bench in a critical World Cup game and both Fifita and Frizell must know this.
Neither has a backlog of quality tests to rely on to push their cause and it's now or never for these two - a case of them having one test to nail it.
Compounding matters is that they must realise that Read, Sam Cane and Savea are going to the World Cup and that three of the likely six loose forward places have already been filled.
They must be aware too that Luke Jacobson, a former captain of the New Zealand Under-20s, looked composed and natural when he made his debut off the bench last week and that Dalton Papalii can play across the loose trio which has considerable value at a World Cup.
Then there is the presence of the ultra-reliable Matt Todd, named as Hansen's favourite player a few years ago and a man everyone knows could be injected off the bench in the last quarter of a major test and make his presence felt.
Both Fifita and Frizell must be feeling that intensity of competition. It would be impossible not to and that is both a blessing and a curse at the moment.
If they spend too long thinking about it, being consumed by the foreboding sense they have an axe hanging over their head, the chances are high it will indeed drop.
But if they can tap into it, stare it down and react with big performances, they will leap ahead of the others and one big game from either in Wellington would see them go a long way ahead of the other contenders.
If they can cope well with competition for places then they can most likely cope well with the pressure a World Cup brings.
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