Impending departure of Charlie Faumuina will hit All Blacks hard

All Blacks prop Ofa Tu'ungafasi during the All Blacks gym session at Les Mills. Photo / Brett Phibbs.

The impending departure of Charlie Faumuina is one the All Blacks are going to take hard.

The giant Blues prop has been an established part of the All Blacks game day squad since 2014, but he will be joining Toulouse after the Lions series.

And the All Blacks will miss him. They have built a supremely effective one-two punch at tight-head prop with Owen Franks typically blunting opponents with 50 minutes of spade work and Faumuina finishing them off in the last half hour.

On Saturday, it was Faumuina who was on at tight-head when the All Blacks delivered their game-winning scrum to create Rieko Ioane's first try.

It took a special sort of player to come off the bench and be able to deliver a scrum like that, no matter how much groundwork had been previously laid.

It is perhaps taken for granted how well the All Blacks manage to use their front row replacements to either retain their ascendancy or find another gear.

But that seamless transition of Faumuina for Franks is going to end after the third test and the All Blacks don't really have another tight-head with remotely the same experience or ability.

The gap between Franks and Faumuina is marginal. They start in the order that they do, not necessarily because there is a hierarchy, more because their combination delivers greater impact when the agile, ball-playing Faumuina comes on later in the game when there tends to be more space.

He made his decision to leave last year - although it was only announced in early 2017- after deciding that he'd achieved everything he wanted to in New Zealand.

"I guess it was just the different challenge," Faumuina said in April. "I have been here [Blues] for close to 10 years now and I'm not saying that it is getting boring or anything, but I feel like I have done my time and have nothing more to prove.

"I just felt that I had the opportunity to do something else and go somewhere else with my family. Financially it was also a pretty good deal so all of those things came into play."

It was a decision that All Blacks coach Steve Hansen respected but challenged. He felt Faumuina, at just 30, still had another World Cup in him and plenty left to prove.
But it wasn't a battle Hansen could win and after this Lions series, he and his fellow coaches are going to have to fast track the development of Ofa Tu'ungafasi who at the moment, is the preferred candidate to replace Faumuina.

The 25-year-old Tu'ungafasi has won four caps to date and while he may not start regularly for the Blues, excites the All Blacks with his obviously impressive physique and athleticism.

Tu'ungafasi is 1.95m and 130kg yet comparatively lean and exceptionally mobile. He's a player who can deliver beyond his core roles and that is always what the All Blacks are looking for.

The major work in progress for Tu'ungafasi is his scrummaging. That part of his game needs to improve and there is no other way for that to happen, other than throwing him out there during the Rugby Championship.

It will most likely be a learn as you go apprenticeship for Tu'ungafasi when the time comes - a case of him coming off the bench for 20 minutes to be exposed to the opposition and learn from experience.

In the short term at least there will be some pining for Faumuina and he will become one of those players whose value was only truly understood after he left New Zealand.