The All Blacks’ match against Scotland in Edinburgh is seen as the biggest threat on their Grand Slam tour.
Scotland, ranked eighth, have a strong backline and pose a significant challenge despite their weaker scrum.
Injuries have reduced the All Blacks’ scrummaging power, complicating their player management strategy for the tour.
The rudimentary analysis of what lies ahead for the All Blacks is that the tests against Ireland and England are the two danger points on their Grand Slam tour.
Most analysis to date has lazily labelled the games in Edinburgh and Cardiff as two gimmes, with the assumptionof victory against Scotland being predicated on nothing stronger than historical expectation – the somewhat illogical rationale that because the All Blacks have never lost to the Scots, they never will.
The deeper, more nuanced assessment, however, is that it’s the All Blacks fixture against Scotland in Edinburgh which has the greatest potential to send shockwaves through New Zealand Rugby and cause seismic disorder.
Scotland, ranked eighth in the world, are not of equal calibre to either England (fifth) or Ireland (third).
There remains a bit of daylight between Scotland and the three Six Nations heavyweights of France, Ireland and England. So, while the Scots have been able to sporadically beat the former and quite regularly beat the latter, they haven’t, for the past decade, had the depth of talent or consistency of performance to finish higher than third in the Northern Hemisphere’s showpiece tournament.
But the fact that they have been good enough to occasionally knock over the highest-ranked teams is part of why they will be the real danger point for the All Blacks on their Grand Slam tour.
Scott Robertson's All Blacks face Ireland, Scotland, England, then Wales. Photo / SmartFrame
Scotland will be targeting the match on November 9 as the most critical in their autumn series that sees them play the USA (on November 1), New Zealand, Argentina and Tonga.
There will need to be some sort of player management strategy for the Scotland game – some attempt to rest key, frontline players and offer opportunity to the peripheral members of the squad.
But how much change can the All Blacks afford to make against a team that may not quite be top table, but have shown themselves to be, at times, one of the most innovative and creative attacking teams in the world game.
And this is where the crunch really lies for the All Blacks: Scotland have a better backline than they do. It’s more cohesive and fluid and knows how it wants to play.
The blunt truth is that Scotland are a better co-ordinated attacking team than New Zealand with the potential to manufacture tries on limited possession.
In Finn Russell, Scotland have the world’s most inventive and audacious No 10, and when he’s at his best, he can pull any defence apart.
Scotland's Finn Russell: "The world’s most inventive and audacious No 10." Photo / Photosport
He’s not a one-man show, though, as Scotland have talent across their backline in Sione Tuipulotu, Blair Kinghorn, Darcy Graham, Duhan van der Merwe and Tom Jordan.
If head coach Scott Robertson gets too cute with his selections – focuses too hard on what lies ahead the following week – the All Blacks could find themselves chasing shadows.
The All Blacks head coach has decided that experience will be the key to winning four tests – having a heavyweight cavalry of old heads to throw into action when selection rotation is necessary – but there is potential for that decision to come back to bite him.
Murrayfield, the most northerly stadium on the world rugby circuit, can turn hostile to visitors quickly, especially if the temperature is sub-zero, as it can be, and the crowd gets a sniff that history could be made.
And this brings into contention the other major factor that will challenge the All Blacks in Edinburgh. Scotland may have a Ferrari backline, but their pack lacks a bit of horsepower, and their scrum is vulnerable – a weak point that can be targeted to concede a stream of penalties.
But the All Blacks have seen a significant reduction in their own scrummaging horsepower after injuries to Tyrel Lomax, Tupou Vaa’i and Patrick Tuipulotu.
The loss of Vaa’i and Tuipulotu has certainly challenged their depth at lock, where, if the selectors want to rest the frontline pair of Scott Barrett and Fabian Holland – or even just the latter – they are going to have to pick the inexperienced Josh Lord and Sam Darry.
Without Lomax, it’s debatable they have the depth at tighthead to really go after the Scottish scrum and buckle it to the point where they can milk a steady stream of penalties.
Edinburgh, a city with a long and rich history of gory and macabre stories, has the potential to become a graveyard of sorts for not only the upcoming Grand Slam tour but also the Robertson coaching regime.
The New Zealand public has become adept and resigned in the past decade to seeing the All Blacks regularly register unwanted firsts.
But a historic first loss to Scotland may be one unpalatable record too far – the sort of defeat that the country can’t accept or brush off as a consequence of professionalism and the inevitable levelling that it brings.
