All Blacks coach Scott Robertson talks coaching philosophy, vision and takes your calls on Newstalk ZB.
THREE KEY FACTS
The All Blacks won the series-opening test against England 16-15 in Dunedin last weekend.
Game two will see both sides take the field at Auckland’s Eden Park, home of the Super Rugby champions.
Blues coach Vern Cotter has laid the perfect blueprint of how the All Blacks forwards should operate.
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
The last team to win a major rugby game at Eden Park did so using a specific brandof rugby that was built almost exclusively on the ball carrying and set-piece power of their forwards and a relentless commitment to smashing up the middle of the park until the opposition could no longer mount an effective resistance.
It was a brand of rugby best dubbed “Vern Ball” – named after its architect, Vern Cotter - and while it may not have ignited the imagination or tickled the soul of rugby romantics, the ultra-direct, confrontational, low-risk rugby that won the Blues a Super Rugby title last month, feels like it should be embraced by Scott Robertson’s All Blacks.
Vern Ball was launched in Super Rugby, but it looks like a brand of rugby perfectly suited to the test arena and yet more specifically to the All Blacks, given they have in their possession a cohort of world-class props who have already shown they have the power to build a destructive scrum and the athleticism to contribute to the pick and drive onslaught that forms the central component of the theme.
Having seen the game’s top international teams in action last weekend, the All Blacks appear to have significant trump card, which is the all-court nature of their props, and that Robertson and his coaching team need to license a gameplan this weekend, and indeed for the rest of the season, that plays to this particular strength.
Year one of a World Cup cycle is about establishing a highly defined brand of rugby – about identifying and producing core features that will serve as the foundation points of the team’s gameplan for the next four years.
Vern Ball has a compelling case to be the style of rugby the All Blacks adopt throughout this World Cup cycle, albeit it should come with a few innovative Robertson twists.
The All Blacks, on the evidence produced last year and again last week, may now have the best scrum in the world and in Ethan de Groot and Tyrel Lomax they have two of the best ball-playing, mobile props whose ability to carry to the line, pass out of contact and get to breakdowns as quickly as some of the loose forwards.
These are the athletes the All Blacks need to play Vern Ball, and the prospect of it working is high, because most opposition sides don’t have props who have the mobility, speed or dynamism to get on their feet and scramble quickly enough to make tackles or be a factor at the breakdown.
Certainly England, unquestionably powerful, didn’t look to have the same level of athleticism, agility and ball-paying craft among their propping quartet.
Essentially, if the All Blacks get Vern Ball right, they may find they are playing it with eight forwards, but only being defended by six, and herein lies the key reason why de Groot and Lomax as well as bench players Ofa Tu’ungafasi and Fletcher Newell can become the defining players of this World Cup cycle.
Vern Cotter and Patrick Tuipulotu with the Super Rugby Pacific trophy. Photo / Photosport
“They are all ball players, they are big men they have good feet, and they can play short at the line you can see how mobile they are and they can scrum and that is one thing we are really excited about - the quality of the athletes who can scrum,” Robertson said of the propping quartet he has picked to play England at Eden Park.
“It is unique and it gives them more chance to carry and use the ball a bit more and the same thing around the lineout, they are big, tall men so we can get some big lifts, which is another strength of ours.”
Vern Ball doesn’t have to be replicated exactly as the Blues played it, and the All Blacks, with a swathe of talent in their backline, could easily add a few additional parts to give it more dimensions.
The beauty of Vern Ball, though, is that it’s a style of rugby that breaks teams down, defuses the impact of rush defences, and if done well and relentlessly, ultimately opens the opportunity to play east-to-west with more space and freedom.
Much has been made of the quality and speed of England’s defence, but they are hardly alone in being an international side with an aggressive desire to cut down space, time and opportunity.
The All Blacks will play plenty of teams this year who bring a similar defensive intensity; they will meet teams, such as South Africa, who will attack their scrum and play their own version of Vern Ball, and they will encounter sides, such as Ireland, who will play a possession game and try to break them down.
All of the likely styles the All Blacks will encounter in 2024 lead back to Vern Ball being the right approach: the right core premise on which Robertson’s team will look to methodically and systematically break teams down and then pull them apart.
