Hooker George Bell scores a try on his All Blacks debut. Photo / Photosport
Hooker George Bell scores a try on his All Blacks debut. Photo / Photosport
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.
OPINION
If a week is a long time in politics, it is yet longer in international rugby and an All Blacks sidethat couldn’t find space or build cohesion in the face of England’s defensive onslaught in Auckland were dancing all over San Diego with a sense of purpose and direction and looking much more like the pass and catch masters they want to be.
By the last quarter, so too was there an element of the All Blacks taking on a futuristic feel as they emptied their bench and unleashed a cohort of debutants, all of whom looked instantly comfortable with the pace and intensity of test rugby and suggested they will be challenging for starting places later in this World Cup cycle.
And the combination of so many new players producing what was at times a mix of slickly constructed and instinctively executed rugby, gave the first real sense of how coach Scott Robertson may be trying to reshape his All Blacks.
This was a young, inexperienced All Blacks side that had the confidence to trust their skills, follow patterns, shrug off mistakes and win big moments.
There was a fearlessness about the new boys, all of whom seemed eerily calm, particularly halfback Noah Hotham who was injected off the bench earlier than anticipated and barely seemed to register that he was playing a test.
Much the same could be said of Wallace Sititi and Pasilio Tosi, and so much of rugby at this level is getting players to believe they belong – a problem the All Blacks don’t seem likely to have with their next generation.
Fiji may have been generous with the space they afforded both through their relatively pedestrian line speed and multitude of missed tackles, but the All Blacks still had to be good enough to exploit it.
Which they mostly were, frequently showing an improved awareness of how to play the ball out the backdoor to Damian McKenzie and how to pass before and in contact to ensure there were several linebreaks through the middle of the field.
It wasn’t always slick or fluid, and there was a little too much possession coughed up, but there was so much more certainty about how the All Blacks were trying to play.
This was the first real glimpse of the continuity game they can play if they are able to get on the front foot and use the perpetual motion of McKenzie and Beauden Barrett to keep pulling the strings for a phalanx of willing runners that were lining up everywhere to get their hands on the ball and hit the Fijian defensive line.
Billy Proctor made his All Blacks debut. Photo / Photosport
Anton Lienert-Brown was the man who led the way, endlessly propelling himself over the gain line and test match rugby takes on a different hue entirely when it’s played on the front foot against a retreating defence.
His midfield partner Billy Proctor showed the value of having a distributor at centre and his quick hands, astute decision making and high work rate to get himself in position to facilitate the attack gave the All Blacks a greater variety of threats when they had the ball.
But some caution too must be applied because a test against Fiji in the Californian sun is hardly representative of what the All Blacks faced in the Auckland winter last week against England or what mostly lies ahead in the Rugby Championship.
They won’t be afforded so much easy space, and they won’t encounter many teams that were as willing to keep the ball alive and play aerobic rugby the way the Fijians did.
And so what was once again the most comforting aspect of the All Blacks performance was their scrummaging, which despite the various personnel changes, appeared to have ramped up the horsepower.
It was yet another display of destructive scrummaging from the All Blacks, where Tamaiti Williams and Fletcher Newell looked like they had been sent back from the future with non-human features that enabled them to relentlessly demolish the Fijians.
It was aggressive and it was impressive and the All Blacks put it beyond any doubt that they have a weaponised set-piece almost regardless of which combination of players they pick and who they are playing.
That’s the part of their game that they can build everything around no matter the opposition or the conditions.
