Jordie Barrett tries to take a high ball against England. Photo / Getty Images
The All Blacks have shown they can handle themselves in a street fight, but their challenge for the remainder of the season is to learn the art of not getting dragged into them.
The 2024 season has begun with two tenacious victories for the All Blacks and strong messages from the coaching group and players that test rugby is by nature an ugly beast where teams suffocate one another with rush defences, contestable kicks and aggressive lineouts.
Everyone likes the term arm-wrestle to describe how these encounters between the world’s best teams often play out – a description that encapsulates the way these games become attritional, tense, move by inches: affairs where one mistake can change everything.
The All Blacks were drawn into prolonged arm-wrestles against England both in Dunedin and Auckland, but their ability to win on each occasion can’t be used to perpetrate the narrative that this is endemically or intrinsically what test rugby is.
That both tests became mired in turgid cycles of low-risk, high-collision rugby is a big win to England, as they came to New Zealand with a plan to stifle and entrap the All Blacks in tight spaces, to frustrate them and prevent them from being able to counter-attack against unstructured defences.
That they were able to do so for 160 minutes is illustrative of how many areas of the All Blacks’ game plan and execution malfunctioned or didn’t deliver as the coaching group expected.
In glimpses, the All Blacks were able to demonstrate that they want to play with pace and width, that they want an aerobic contest to fatigue opponents and utilise the athleticism, conditioning and high skill levels of the athletes they have developed.
Being sucked into England’s trap was never part of the All Blacks plan, and yet it happened in Auckland largely because the lineout failed to provide possession and was a constant valve to release the pressure on England.
There was a lack of precision and strategic cohesion to the kicking game.
It failed to tie England down in areas they didn’t want to be, and instead just surrendered possession and good field position to them, and the forwards, collectively, didn’t mount a difficult-to-stop pick-and-drive onslaught to temper the speed and effectiveness of the rush defence they faced.
There were top marks handed to the All Blacks for graft, desire and leadership under pressure, but head coach Scott Robertson accepts that his team must become better at not being sucked into these street fights by getting more of their own game right to control the tempo, inflict scoreboard pressure by being more clinical, and play more extensively in the opposition’s territory.
“We have got to finish what we start,” Robertson said. “We are creating those opportunities.
“A couple of lineouts, we took the pressure off and that is not part of our DNA. We will nail those normally so we have just got to be honest and being on tour is a great way to do that.
“We have been together for a while now and we need a lot of honesty and to make sure people are accountable for knowing their own areas.”
In essence, learning the art of being able to play their style of aerobic rugby against opponents whose entire game plan is built on not allowing that to happen is likely to be the priority and the defining challenge for the All Blacks throughout both this year and this World Cup cycle.
England, as disciplined, physical and difficult to beat as they were, are probably a step behind South Africa, Ireland and France – all three of whom the All Blacks will meet later this year.
Broadly, England’s style of rugby – building pressure through defensive line speed, a clever kicking strategy, aggressive work at set piece and collision, and physical ball-carrying in the middle of the field – is foundation stuff for South Africa, Ireland and France, too.
All four nations have built athletes who are designed to thrive in attritional rugby – forwards who can bring heft and impact to collisions and set-piece work, but who are not necessarily predisposed to contribute as effectively in more open, aerobic contests.
And it’s perhaps because of this weight of preference for slower, physical, grinding contests that the All Blacks face another, harder-to-manage obstacle in their quest to play a faster brand of rugby that induces fatigue.
England, as South Africa, Ireland and France will no doubt do, too, were masters at adeptly managing to enforce prolonged breaks in play through forwards suddenly needing medical attention.
There were several occasions when England managed to grab a full minute of recovery time for injuries that appeared dubious – and in one instance to allow players to retie their boots.
Player safety has to be paramount, but they also can’t be cynically manipulated as much as Nic Berry was at Eden Park.
World Rugby says it wants test rugby to appeal as entertainment to everyone and not just the purists, but yet it continues to be fearful about fully empowering referees to better manage the flow of test matches and licence them to stamp out cynical ploys designed to bring things to a grinding halt.
“We wanted to play quick,” Robertson said. “We want to get there and take those lineouts and a lot of those lineouts were slowed up and the scrum was slowed up.
“We have made referees and World Rugby aware that we want to keep the game going. We are in the entertainment game and we want to keep those moments, and they have got the safety element as well and it is a fine balance.
“I don’t want to get too into the detail, but the positivity of our game is to play and keep going. There have been so many advances. The shot clock has come down, you have got the scrum clock and all these other clocks and then the game can be marginalised in different ways and slowed up.
“In full respect to everyone, every scenario is different and I don’t want to be too generalised about it but we can speed our game up a little more and bring fatigue into it.”
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.
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