His tenure will begin with two home tests against England in July, with a third in New Zealand against Fiji. There is a desire for a second game to be played against Fiji in Fiji seven days later, to turn that into a two-test series. This is partly to acknowledge the significant role Fiji have played in building rugby in the wider Pacific region and the steady stream of players it has inadvertently provided the All Blacks over the years. But it’s also about protecting a prime financial asset – the broadcast dollars that are going to flood in once the newly-agreed League of Nations gets up and running in 2026.
Fiji are likely to be invited to join that competition and they need to be ready to compete, so New Zealand is doing its bit to help get them ready and to provide broadcasters with the confidence that they will be spending their cash on something top-notch.
If the second test can be agreed upon – and the barrier to that happening is the administrative chaos in Fiji – the All Blacks will face four tests in four weeks, the final one being in the searing heat and humidity of either Lautoka or Suva, where so many Super Rugby teams have struggled to cope.
The All Blacks’ schedule for the Rugby Championship may look entirely different next year too, with plans under consideration to play Argentina in the United States and to extend the content around the two-test visit to South Africa. The Rugby Championship will revert to the 2022 format of the All Blacks playing two tests in South Africa and hosting Argentina twice, with home and away games against the Wallabies. One of the home tests against the Pumas may be taken to Los Angeles, Miami or some other city in the United States.
The rationale is two-fold: back-to-back tests against Argentina will be hard to sell out – when they came in 2022, the games were played in the smaller venues of Christchurch and Hamilton.
Also, Silver Lake is adamant that there are millions of offshore All Blacks fans waiting to be monetised and therefore playing a Rugby Championship test in the United States is a means to test that theory. While the idea stacks up commercially, the high-performance impact will be yet more long-haul travel for the players and a game at the height of the Northern Hemisphere summer, when temperatures could be oppressive.
There are also ongoing discussions about New Zealand bringing an expanded tour party to South Africa and for the itinerary to include All Blacks XV fixtures.
NZR has a desire to expose more elite players to top-level rugby in South Africa now that Super Rugby no longer includes teams from the Republic, and to do so by building a wider content package around the Rugby Championship fixtures.
The All Blacks’ season will likely finish with a test in Japan (this is part of the strategic partnership the two countries agreed on last year) a test against England, which has been confirmed for November 2 in London, and three other clashes against Six Nations opposition in Europe, with one likely to be against France and Ireland likely to be the last stop on November 23.
If everything goes to plan, the All Blacks might play 15 tests in 10 countries across five continents and pick up $1m-plus paydays in the United States, Japan and London.
It will be an enormously challenging itinerary, including as it will tests against the current numbers one, two, four and five in the world. But what will make it most challenging is that Robertson has been installed to produce a higher win ratio than the 70 per cent achieved by his predecessor Ian Foster.
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.
