Lee Stensness: No show this time for Joe

No Joe Rokocoko? Have the All Black selectors gone loco? The exclusion of Rokocoko from the starting XV of the All Black team to play England was the only real surprise and one that seems to have passed relatively uncontroversially, considering that by historical standards Rokocoko is already an all-time great.

Rokocoko has the best tries-per-test [TPT] ratio of any player in international rugby history with more than 30.

Within the group of the top 20 all-time test try scorers, his TPT ratio is 1.07, the next best is fellow All Black Doug Howlett with 0.83. Added to that, Rokocoko has four tries in three tests against England, making him an ideal selection for a test against that opposition.

He was in excellent form for the All Blacks in the Tri Nations, especially in the decider in Dunedin, which included that Jonah-like run through the heart of the South African defence.

If you add to that his continued good form during important NPC matches with Auckland, it says to me his omission against England was the one developmental selection of that test XV.

It is already established that Rokocoko is an experienced, big-match All Black. This morning's Twickenham test was a major step in Sitiveni Sivivatu's development. The experience he would have gained from another match of that significance and intensity adds more to his personal development and to the All Black squad's development than it does to Rokocoko and the team.

The number of tests the All Blacks will play of such magnitude before the 2007 World Cup is rapidly diminishing, so I believe the All Blacks used this morning's test to help Sivivatu prove that he is comfortable at the highest level of rugby intensity.

Like the All Black coaches have been saying all along, this tour is about building for the future. When it comes to selecting test-match teams, experience counts for plenty and it certainly will at World Cup time. The more players with big test-match experience the better, and having Sivivatu in the starting XV ahead of Rokocoko was part of the long-term strategy.

Sivivatu himself is an amazing player - his TPT ratio at 1.5, after only four tests, is even better than Rokocoko's. However, it is very early days in his career and his tries for the All Blacks, before last night, had come against second-tier teams: Fiji and the 2005 Lions.

However, the memory of the two tries Sivivatu scored against the All Blacks for the Pacific Islanders last year, as well as the five in one match against Auckland, stamp him as a player of true class and one well worth developing - even though, at this stage, I think that Rokocoko is a better all-round player.