Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and has written several books about sport.
OPINION
In 2014, a dejected and dumbfounded South Africa head coach Heyneke Meyer slumped on the bench inside the href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/all-blacks/" target="_blank">All Blacks dressing room at Westpac Stadium and confessed that his Springboks team didn’t know how to deal with the strategic kicking masterclass to which they had just been subjected.
Meyer and All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen had become firm friends after stepping into their respective roles in 2012, and it was their ritual to share a post-match beer each time they met.
The game in Wellington was their fifth clash against one another, and it had ended with a fifth successive All Blacks victory, and Meyer admitted that he felt the difference between the two teams each time had been New Zealand’s well-thought-out and accurately executed kick strategy.
Hansen agreed, but to the rest of the world this would have made little sense because what they thought they were looking at was an All Blacks team that was winning on the strength of their pass and catch and ability to score tries through their running prowess.
But the statistics aligned with Meyer’s contention – the All Blacks kicked more than any other team in the Rugby Championship in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and be it Daniel Carter, Aaron Cruden or Beauden Barrett at first five, New Zealand knew how to use the boot to exert intense pressure and then sucker punch with their innate ball handling.
The All Blacks became the most dominant team in the history of rugby between 2012 and 2015 – and they did it partly through the art of illusion: they presented as a ball-in-hand team who were all about the counter-attack, when in fact the core of their game was their ability to win contestable kicks, and use the cultured boots of their various No 10s to turn teams and keep them pinned in places they didn’t want to be.
Here we are now 10 years on and, if there is one facet of the 2024 All Blacks that is universally considered to need immediate attention, it is their ability to use their kicking game as part of an orchestrated attack strategy.
Damian McKenzie has, as coach Scott Robertson says, made a convincing start to his new career as the All Blacks’ tactical general.
He’s played with the requisite authority and confidence international No 10s must possess.
The All Blacks were near-invincible in 2015 due to their mastery of the kicking game, writes Gregor Paul. Photo / Photosport
He’s taken responsibility for managing things, and his decision-making has mostly been good, his backfield work was superb against England, and against Fiji there were signs of how dangerous he can be ghosting behind the big forwards to then run on an arcing line when the ball is passed out the back.
McKenzie is making progress on what can be a long and at times difficult journey to becoming a world-class first five.
But the one area of his game individually – and the All Blacks’ collectively – that still looks to be stuck in Super Rugby mode is his ability to exert pressure through his tactical kicking.
Knowing where, when and how to kick are three separate challenges and it’s only when all three are successfully executed that opposition teams can be pressured to breaking point.
It’s an art to grind teams down with a tactical kicking onslaught and one that the All Blacks of 2024 seem a way off discovering, with Sky commentator Justin Marshall rightly noting that there are times when McKenzie has seemed devoid of any better idea than to hoof the ball down the middle of the field in hope rather than expectation.
And across all three tests played this year, there has been little discernible evidence that the All Blacks have a definitive strategy in mind – as in whether they want to focus on contestable kicks, play a territory game, or keep turning their opposition to force them to play out of their own dark corners.
This lack of sophistication and deeper appreciation of how to manipulate a defence with the boot is perhaps a symptom of Super Rugby Pacific being so heavily skewed towards pass and run that teams rarely develop a full understanding of how to use a kicking strategy.
But if McKenzie is to become the first-five the All Blacks truly need him to be, the priority throughout the Rugby Championship is to help him develop greater variety and accuracy to his execution, and, most important, better understanding of when and where to kick as part of a well-considered plan.
And that pressure to uphold an effective kicking strategy can’t sit solely on the shoulders of McKenzie.
Jordie Barrett has a thumping right boot and his brother, Beauden, also knows how to send the ball flying, and the currently injured Cam Roigard can use his left boot to launch towering box kicks.
The raw material is there, but the All Blacks need to know how to utilise the individual skill sets into a cohesive, flexible plan – one that ultimately has Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus congratulating Robertson later this year for outsmarting him.
