ANALYSIS
Over a lifetime of covering rugby, Phil Gifford has seen many of the greatest players to don the black jersey – and the biggest change in that time has been the arrival of the professionalism in 1996. Today, he begins a series rating the best All Blacks of the professional era, starting with fullbacks and wingers.
Fullbacks
Israel Dagg
(2010-2017, 66 tests)
His stunning form in the All Blacks’ victorious 2011 World Cup campaign is one of the main reasons Israel Dagg has to be in this list. By rights he shouldn’t have even been playing. Just four months before the cup, he was lying unconscious on an operating table in Christchurch while his surgeon worked on his right thigh, where the muscle had almost torn completely away from the bone as he smacked away a clearing kick in a Super Rugby game for the Crusaders in Cape Town.
“We didn’t expect him to make it [back from the injury],” said coach Graham Henry, when he named Dagg for the opening match of the cup against Tonga.
Composure was always Dagg’s ace in the hole. In 2010, he’d stepped into the test rugby arena against Ireland with the stylish ease of a man putting on an Armani suit. Way too often for their liking, Irish players in New Plymouth found themselves grasping at air that a split-second earlier had been filled by Dagg.
Dagg also played a crucial role in the All Blacks’ 2013 world record-setting run of 14 winning tests. You could see the focus, Dagg would say, when, after a nail-biting 38-27 against the Springboks at Ellis Park, the All Blacks were so exhausted, “even Richie McCaw couldn’t breathe”.
Mils Muliaina
(2003-2011, 100 tests)
The first All Blacks back to win 100 test caps, Mils Muliaina was equally at home on the wing or at centre, but fullback, where he played 85 of his tests, was where the full range of his talents bloomed.
The son of Samoan parents who immigrated to Invercargill when he was only 3, Muliaina won his first national honours as a schoolboy and age-group representative. His speed and elusiveness made him a natural sevens player. In 2002 at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, he scored New Zealand’s first try in the sevens final as they beat Fiji 33-15.
As a test fullback, Muliaina was unflappable, impeccable under the high ball, with the ability to pick exactly when to hit the backline and put his outside runners into space.
Ben Smith
(2009-2019, 84 tests)
Ben Smith’s move to fullback was an accident. In 2007, he was an inside-back reserve at an Otago pre-season trial match. Both men in the 15 jerseys were injured and suddenly he was on the field as a fullback.
But the brilliant career Smith then forged for the Highlanders and the All Blacks didn’t have a trace of lottery luck about it.
The self-effacing Smith was dubbed “Ben from Accounts” by the Alternative Commentary Collective. And he actually was the epitome of the pleasant everyman next door, if your neighbour happened to have blinding speed when he ran, the ability to leap the height of a tall building and catch a rugby ball at the apex of the jump, a total lack of concern for his own safety and a strength that belied his almost willowy physique.
Basically worshipped in Dunedin, it took a while for the New Zealand selectors to realise that as good as Smith was on the wing, he was even better at fullback.
He’d played 28 tests before he started for the All Blacks at fullback, but once Steve Hansen settled on him in the position, he was a key man in the best All Blacks World Cup backline ever, the star-studded line-up of 2015.
Christian Cullen
(1996-2002, 58 tests)
Nothing sums up the contrast between Christian Cullen’s spectacular on-field style, and his reticence off it, than what happened during and after his first test for the All Blacks, against Manu Samoa, in Napier.
Cullen scored three tries, as the All Blacks won 51-10. His first touches of the ball weren’t much fun. First, he was castled by Samoan wing Brian Lima, a tackler so fierce his nickname was The Chiropractor. Then he was hit in the throat by flanker Sam Kaleta.
Under the stand at McLean Park, surrounded by journalists, Cullen didn’t elaborate on his hat-trick of tries, looking almost embarrassed when questioned about them. But he laconically allowed that “those first tackles settled me down a bit”.
Cullen had been rushed into the All Blacks by coach John Hart on the back of a stellar performance at the Hong Kong Sevens, where he was named player of the tournament.
What made him so special? His speed off the mark was extraordinary, as was his daring and eye for a gap. Later in ′96, Cullen played a massive role in the first All Blacks series win in South Africa.
There was an odd ending to a great career. At the 1999 World Cup, to accommodate an abundance of talent in the back three, he was moved to centre, a change that never really worked. Then in 2000, he was dropped, along with Taine Randell and Jeff Wilson, by new coach John Mitchell – with a brutal comment: “I’ve never selected them, so I didn’t call them.”
Cullen summed up the general feeling of the rugby public: “I thought he [Mitchell] was a bit of a dick for saying that.” In fact, Cullen’s achievements in 45 starts as an All Blacks fullback were monumental.
Wingers
Caleb Clarke
(2020-2023, 20 tests)
Caleb Clarke’s had an unusual career. There was a blinding start in 2020 against the Wallabies at Eden Park. His running with the ball was impressive enough, and his extraordinary strength was demonstrated when three Wallabies tried to shove him into touch – and he backed the group away from the sideline as if he was pushing off a giant, gold-jerseyed crab.
He then devoted 2021 to sevens, only to miss out on the Olympic Games squad he was chasing. Back in 15s, he was a bit player at the 2023 World Cup. But the 2024 version Clarke looks leaner, and even more explosive, than he was in ′20.
Cory Jane
(2008-2014, 53 tests)
Cory Jane could make the Energiser bunny look like a slacker. He made it to the All Blacks through club and provincial rugby, and then sevens, where he was in the Commonwealth Games gold medal side in 2006. At 85kg, he was small even by pre-professional All Blacks standards, but he appeared to have been born without a fear gene.
A video of Jane racing forward with his eyes glued on a descending football, then timing his leap perfectly and cradling the ball into his arms could be used in a coaching course to teach a young player the importance of impeccable technique.
Will Jordan
(2020-2023, 31 tests)
Will Jordan has scored an amazing 31 test tries, having started all but one of his internationals on the wing. What’s startling is that many, including some former All Blacks coaches, believe he’s actually an even better fullback.
Like the greatest players, Jordan seems to be able to see what’s going to happen two or three moves down the track, and has the elusiveness and pace to get to where the defence is at its most stretched. He’s already the most promising player to come out of Christchurch Boys’ High School since Dan Carter.
Rieko Ioane
(2016-2023, 69 tests)
Rieko Ioane hasn’t played on the wing for the All Blacks since 2021, but his form there in the first three seasons after his first starting test in 2017 was so brilliant that it still overshadows his play at centre.
He exploded into international rugby against the British and Irish Lions at Eden Park in ‘17, scoring two tries. Coach Steve Hansen was right when he said: “That second try, not many people would have scored it, because the guys chasing him are very good players and very quick.” Hansen, with perfect timing, then paused. “He was just a little quicker.” And for the rest of his time on the wing, Ioane would prove to be a little quicker than anyone who marked him.
Joe Rokocoko
(2003-2010, 68 tests)
The great Carwyn James, who in 1971 coached the only Lions team to win a series in New Zealand, believed that “speed will forgive and repair most errors or problems in the game”. Joe Rokocoko – tall and lean – was built like Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt and he ran with the same sort of effortless grace. Rokocoko’s test career tailed off quickly, but in his first two seasons he was a sensation, scoring 27 tries in 23 tests.
Julian Savea
(2012-2017, 54 tests)
Julian Savea was in one of the greatest intakes of new All Blacks in history when, in 2012, he joined the likes of Aaron Smith, Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane and Beauden Barrett in the jersey. Savea scored 46 test tries, and hit a stunning career peak in the 62-13 whipping of France in the 2015 World Cup quarter-final. The hunger that seemed muted in pool play turned into a ravenous beast; the best touch was that when the ball didn’t come to Savea, he went looking for it.
Doug Howlett
(2000-2007, 62 tests)
At Auckland Grammar, Doug Howlett was a sprint champion, a rugby star and academically gifted. Film-star good-looking, he had enough of a sense of humour about himself to pose, festooned with adoring models, for a rugby magazine cover headlined “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful”. His rugby career was a boys’ own fairy tale.
In the 1996 Auckland side at 18, while still at school, he was an All Black by 2000. Just 22 seconds after he ran on against Tonga in his first test, he was over for a try. By the time the 2007 World Cup quarter-final in Cardiff began, he’d scored 49 times for the All Blacks. But he was not in the match-day squad. It was suggested the selectors wanted to see whether Joe Rokocoko or Sitiveni Sivivatu was the best man to partner him in the semifinal. The All Blacks famously lost, 20-18, and Howlett played out his career at Munster in Ireland.
Jeff Wilson
(1993-2001, 60 tests)
Jeff Wilson was one of the most gifted all-round sportsmen to ever wear an All Blacks jersey. As a 19-year-old, he played for both the senior New Zealand cricket and rugby sides – and at a sports dinner at the time, his father told me he believed his son’s best sport was actually basketball.
In 1996, Wilson was a key man in the All Blacks’ first series win in South Africa, a blonde flash on the wing. By then his nickname “Goldie” from his schooldays at Cargill High School in Southland had lost any satirical edge: he really was the golden boy of international rugby.
Jonah Lomu
(1995-2002, 63 tests)
Don’t believe people who say that Jonah Lomu’s star had basically faded by the time his astonishing debut at the last amateur Rugby World Cup in 1995 was over. In the 1999 World Cup semifinal against France at Twickenham, he almost set up an All Blacks victory with two brilliant tries. For the second, he smacked aside one of the biggest French forwards, the rugged Moroccan Abdel Benazzi.
In Sydney in 2000, in the greatest test ever played, he scored the winning All Blacks try, tip-toeing down the sideline past despairing tacklers. His captain, Todd Blackadder, said: “Who else but Jonah could have scored that try?” Indeed.
Part two of the greatest All Blacks of the professional era series, looking at midfielders and first five-eighths, is published tomorrow.
Phil Gifford has twice been judged New Zealand sportswriter of the year, has won nine New Zealand and two Australasian radio awards, and been judged New Zealand Sports Columnist of the year three times. In 2010 he was honoured with the SPARC lifetime achievement award for services to sports journalism.