The All Blacks wrap up their week in France’s wine capital as NZ Herald’s Chereè Kinnear and Liam Napier look at how the team has made the most of their longest-ever break between World Cup matches. Video / NZ Herald
If Will Jordan isn’t the answer at fullback, maybe we are asking the wrong questions.
Fans have bemoaned Ian Foster’s reluctance to play Jordan in his preferred position for theAll Blacks, prompting a response from our own Gregor Paul this week in a piece advocatingleaving Jordan on the wing.
This was based on two main contentions: that Jordan wasn’t particularly adept at one of the fullback’s main roles, defusing high kicks, and that the All Blacks use the fullback as a “facilitator” rather than strike weaponry – a player who guides the counter-attack, not strike the decisive blow.
Quite right too, though there was a third, larger, reason – Jordan in space at fullback was a “romantic theory” because of “the prevailing style of rugby the All Blacks will encounter at this tournament”. It is, Gregor said, a tournament of kick-chase, big scrums, defensive line speed and relentlessly drilled conservative mindsets that are telling players the safest and best option is to get rid of the ball if not much is cooking after a few phases of possession.
Again, quite right. But why focus on the opposition rather than what the All Blacks are doing? If the game of rugby has become so stop-start, so consumed by defence, set pieces and kick-and-chase (and when the winning strategy against the All Blacks is to give them the ball and then pressure them into mistakes), why are the All Blacks persisting with their running/counter-attacking game?
Will Jordan during an All Blacks training session. Photo / Getty Images
They changed things against France in the first pool match, employing long kicking which went about as well as long Covid; it stood as a strong argument against ever doing that again. So maybe the question to ask is whether there will be a change in the All Blacks’ style once they get past Italy and Uruguay. Shouldn’t that change of style dictate selection, rather than basing it on which players cope best with what other teams throw at us?
On the end-of-year Europe tour, when Dave Rennie still had the Wallabies, the Australians should have beaten the team we can now safely say (regardless of the outcome of this World Cup) is the best in the world: France. All they needed was a few minutes of closing the game down – but a defensive disaster saw winger Tom Wright and new fullback Jock Campbell miss tackles on French winger Damien Penaud as he scored the winning try.
The French, admittedly rusty, struggled with the Australian style. The French formula is: athletic forwards in a highly effective short-passing game that is hard to resist; good kicking from hand and goalkicking, excellent defence; accumulating points from ruck and scrum penalties. If they are deep into their territory, they exit with long, raking kicks.
The Wallabies played kick-tennis, to begin with, but then realised there was another way. They held the ball, slowly building multi-phase attacks from the back, bothering the French. Even more, they looked to have the edge in pace. Wright scorched past Penaud to spark one fine try and Lalakai Foketi outstripped crack first-five Romain Ntamack (now injured out of the tournament) to score. The Wallabies also focused on the fulcrum of France – halfback Antoine Dupont, their brains, nerve centre and innovation laboratory. They pressured him, with Nick White outplaying Dupont, harrying him around the edges.
So what does all this have to do with where to play Jordan? Again, it’s not the first question to ask. In recent defeats (including Ireland, England and France) when the All Blacks have gone back to basics, they have looked much better for it. They often employed pick-and-go and driving tactics to settle things down, gain territory, control the ball and raise defensive uncertainty. You can’t play a whole game in pick-and-go mode, of course, but if it is employed in tandem with a game plan like that of those Wallabies (hold the ball, build from the back rather than kick the ball back to the opposition who are better at kicking it back to you) it produces pressure and mistakes.
So a change of style, more forward-oriented, may come into it. After that, we can look at fullbacks. Jordan has to be in the back three somewhere. So shift the focus to the current No 15, Beauden Barrett. For many, he is not playing like the Beaudy of old; too many dips in form and too many aimless kicks. There is sometimes an air of hesitation and hopefulness.
He remains an ideal player to bring off the bench in the last 20-30 minutes. The All Blacks have, in Leicester Fainga’anuku and Mark Telea, two power wingers good under the high ball and jackals in the rucks – not to mention the proven ability to beat tacklers and hang onto the ball. Jordan’s angled runs and speed in broken play will be important, whether at fullback or wing. But they need to be part of a better game plan than simply countering what the opposition will do.
There’s an old saying: If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe. It’s hard to believe the All Blacks believe what they are doing currently is good enough to beat France, Ireland or South Africa.
We all know Foster won’t send Barrett to the bench and play Jordan at 15. But maybe he’s not asking the right questions either.
Paul Lewis has been a journalist since the last ice age. Sport has been a lifetime pleasure and part of a professional career during which he has written four books, covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic and Commonwealth Games and more.
