Of all the portents on view in Dunedin to serve as an indicator of what may lie ahead this season for the All Blacks, perhaps none better foretold the future than the last scrum of the game.
With two minutes to go, the All Blacks won a scrum 20 metresin front of their posts, and with France just four points behind, stand-in captain Ardie Savea had a big call to make.
He gathered his pack – which included debutantes Fabian Holland, Du’Plessis Kirifi and Ollie Norris, Pasilio Tosi and Samipeni Finau who had 15 caps between them and Tupou Vaa’i and Samisoni Taukei’aho (68 between them).
For an All Blacks team, this was a staggeringly young and inexperienced pack. Savea had more caps than the other seven combined and yet when he weighed up between the option of taking the ball out the back of the scrum or holding it in to see if enough pressure could be exerted to win a penalty, he chose the latter.
It was decisive and brave – an incredible show of confidence in the young men around him – and they repaid him with a co-ordinated and destructive heave that buckled the French front-row and had referee Nic Berry’s arm shooting up to award the game-closing penalty.
It was one big moment in the context of the game, but one giant moment in the wider context of this World Cup cycle.
All Blacks forwards coach Jason Ryan: 'We showed composure at the right time.' Photo / SmartFrame
“Yeah, it was,” All Blacks forwards coach Jason Ryan said when he was asked if this was the personal highlight in the 31-27 victory.
“[We had] A couple of young boys in there and Ollie [Norris] on debut. [The media had said] He had a bit of a tough final, we have set him up well. He’s a big body and with younger front rowers there can sometimes be a bit of pain early.
“But he should take a bit of confidence out of that. We showed composure at the right time. The boys had a conversation around are we going to scrum for that penalty at the end or are we going to play and Ardie said, ‘No, let’s go after them’.
“That is being assertive in decision making. It was a moment, but we have still got to be better, but we thought we gave back some quality ball off our scrum and won some penalties.”
After 16 weeks of Super Rugby – a competition that is all about speed and space – it’s all too easy to be lulled into thinking that test football can be played in a similar way.
But it can’t. It’s a different, more nuanced game of collisions, prolonged scrums, choreographed lineouts and strategic kicking duels.
Any team that turns up with a wobbly scrum or a malfunctioning lineout is unlikely to win, and the All Blacks have had periods in their not-so-distant past in which they have been deficient in the basic set-piece arts.
Not now, and while there was a bit of slapstick to the All Blacks aerial display where they could get under any of their contestable kicks, and occasionally a few big holes in their defence, the supremely clean and proficient work of both their scrum and lineout for the full 80 minutes is reason to feel that more consistently impressive performances lie down the track.
Even if the All Blacks find themselves without captain Scott Barrett this week – he’s nursing a niggly Achilles that forced him off after 57 minutes – there will be a high degree of confidence that Patrick Tuipulotu will step in and the set-piece will work just as well.
There is serious potential now in the All Blacks tight five. Holland chugged through an 80-minute shift of hard graft, and clean takes at number two; Fletcher Newell was at the French in much the same way he took apart the respective front-rows of the Blues and Chiefs in the last two weeks of Super Rugby, and Tosi and Taukei’aho made genuine impact off the bench.
With Tyrel Lomax hopeful of soon returning, Tamaiti Williams to come back into the mix in September after knee surgery, and Vaa’i doing just about enough in Dunedin to suggest he really can flit between lock and blindside, there is every reason to see the power, technical accuracy and extended cast of legitimate tight five characters as the real strength of this All Blacks team.
Ardie Savea makes a break against France, in Dunedin. Photo / Photosport
And what will help foster that confidence is the value of now having a game in the system to help players better adapt their mindset to the realities of the international game.
“It is different,” Ryan said of the challenge players face adjusting from Super Rugby. “We said to the boys all week, ‘nothing is going to prepare you’.
“We talk about finals rugby in Super, but the boys all said in the shed that nothing really prepares them. It is just a totally different contest.
“There are different pressures. The margins… You can’t get away with anything… loose carries, a couple of times we lost it in contact. At breakdown, we could have been a little bit more direct.
“Now we know and we got the win and we found the way. It wasn’t pretty but it was good for us. Better than having a big scoring margin and then we walk past things potentially.
“We put the guys out there and we trust them to do their job, and I think they did.
“They all owned their own role and they experienced that pressure and there is an old saying that sometimes you have to win in the mud – even though there was no mud out there – we just found a way.
“There was grit, there was a lot of blood in the shed – boys with cut eyes – and they’re sore this morning, but that will set us up.”
