Black Oops: What on earth were they thinking?

Leon MacDonald. Photo / Supplied

Top 10 All Black selection clangers
So the All Black squad for the Tri Nations is complete - and with few surprises. Gregor Paul thinks there were some bumps in the road before this smooth path was found - and runs the rule over his Top 10 selection flops in recent years.

1 Campbell Johnstone
Props are often the hardest to be sure about. The jump from Super Rugby level to test football is probably bigger for props than it is for any other position.

That still doesn't adequately explain the total misjudgement the All Black coaching panel made when they selected Campbell Johnstone for the British Lions series in 2005.

Johnstone hadn't particularly shone for the Crusaders that year and looked from afar to be an immobile lump. But behind the scenes the All Black coaches had seen something special. Up close they had seen Johnstone's scrummaging and reckoned he was international class. They were hugely excited by his potential to stand up to what would inevitably be a powerful and set-piece-orientated Lions side.

"He has the strongest right shoulder in New Zealand rugby," was assistant coach Steve Hansen's proud proclamation of Johnstone in Napier the day the squad was announced.

That pride quickly faded as, after three brief appearances off the bench, Johnstone was quietly let go and never seen in black again. He joined Biarritz in 2008, possibly as unsure as everyone else why he had ever been selected.

2 Bryn Evans
Even now there are plenty of avid rugby followers who are unsure who Bryn Evans is. He pulled off the impossible of being barely sighted in Super Rugby yet being in possession of two test caps.

The story of Evans is quite fascinating. He was drafted by the Blues in 2008 when Ali Williams was hiding out in Christchurch; keeping his distance from then coach David Nucifora.

Evans hardly took the field and, when new Blues coach Pat Lam arrived later in the year, he had no intention of keeping the former New Zealand Schools lock. A Hawke's Bay regular, Evans was picked up by the Hurricanes in 2009 but coach Colin Cooper preferred the talents of Jason Eaton and Jeremy Thrush that season.

Yet somehow when the All Black squad was named in June, Evans was in it. Well, he was actually named in the Junior All Blacks but brought in as cover for the injured Williams. Cooper and Lam may not have been sold on Evans but the All Black coaches had seen, so they reckoned, a superb aerial athlete who was good at collecting kick-offs and organising lineouts - precisely the sort of skills they felt a lock should have.

Evans managed two appearances off the bench against France before injury took him out for the remainder of 2009. The pattern repeated in 2010 with Evans not really used by the Hurricanes and then not wanted by the All Blacks as they had seen a vastly improved version of the Hawke's Bay man in Sam Whitelock.

What Whitelock showed the All Black coaches was that clean-outs, tackling, scrummaging grunt and low body position in contact are just as important for locks.

Evans didn't really have those and new Hurricanes coach Mark Hammett was happy to let the 26-year-old go - which is why the two-cap All Black has signed with London Irish.

3 Greg Rawlinson
He became involved in a tug of war between the Springboks and All Blacks that was difficult to understand. A solid campaigner with North Harbour and the Blues, Dolph [he looks remarkably like the movie actor Dolph Lundgren] never really impressed as a world-class lock.

Test rugby was probably always going to be beyond him yet the All Blacks got quite edgy when several approaches were made by Springbok coach Jake White in 2005 and 2006.

Born and bred in Durban, Rawlinson shifted to New Zealand in 2002 to play for the Bay of Plenty when he couldn't get a fair go at the Sharks. He liked New Zealand so he stayed - shifting to Harbour in 2003 and making the Blues in 2004. By 2005 he was being wooed by the Boks.

At 2.01m Rawlinson was a big unit with a big work rate. He was a typical South African lock in that he hit the right places and didn't have ambition to be a loose forward.

He turned down the chance to return to South Africa but when the Boks came back in 2006, he was seriously tempted. The All Black coaches knew the best way to help make his mind up - pick him in their opening squad that year.

By 2006 Rawlinson was eligible under the three-year residency rule and, once he had played for the All Blacks, that would be it. The Boks couldn't have him. That seemed to be the entire rationale entirely - to spite the Boks. Rawlinson didn't have the mobility or raw aggression required to make it as an All Black.

4 Kevin Senio
A bit like Kevin Putt, Kevin Senio will be one of those frustrating trivia questions in years to come - was he ever an All Black? Well, the answer to the former is no and the latter is yes. Which is remarkable really as Putt was a Waikato legend. As for Senio - why he came on to the field for 10 minutes against Australia will remain a mystery. Lovely guy and a good player but an All Black..? That was a step too far.

His cameo appearance came with significant consequences. A Bay of Plenty player at the time, Senio had signed with Canterbury and the Crusaders earlier in 2005 as a replacement for Justin Marshall. Mose Tuiali'i had also signed and Canterbury were in talks with Rico Gear to retrieve him from Nelson Bays. But when Senio came on the field it scuppered Gear's chances because Canterbury could only sign two All Blacks in a season. So Gear had to stay where he was but the greater shame was that Senio's 10 minutes denied him the chance of playing for Samoa.

Not really All Black material, Senio would have been an excellent halfback for Samoa for whom he was also qualified but those 10 minutes of test action in Auckland killed all that.

5 Aled de Malmanche
A bruising ball carrier and a destructive tackler at times, Aled de Malmanche had some good qualities. But he was a converted prop playing at hooker and it showed in his throwing. He was abysmal when it came to putting the ball down the middle. If that seems harsh, it really wasn't. Every club hooker across New Zealand would fancy they could do a better job. For some reason de Malmanche just couldn't get it right. He was given all the technical help anyone could ask for and yet it didn't make any difference. The ball would not fly in the direction he needed it to.

The All Black coaches were exceptionally generous with him. They stayed patient throughout 2009 hoping that this technical flaw would fix itself. It never did and everyone had to groan and yell as lineout after lineout went astray and great attacking opportunities were lost.

De Malmanche made two appearances off the bench in 2009 and we all thought that would be it. But injury to others in 2010 led to the Chiefs hooker re-appearing in 2010 and we got more of the same. It was hard to fathom why the All Blacks were wasting so much time on de Malmanche when Hika Elliot was so obviously a better prospect.

6 Sosene Anesi
Given he is super-quick, it is easy to see why the selectors were seduced by Sosene Anesi. He had clocked 10.5s for the 100m and, unlike a lot of track sprinters, his pace came through on the field.

But that's all he had and, to their horror, the coaches realised that all too late. They picked Anesi in 2005 and started him against Fiji. He lasted 40 minutes before they pulled the plug and never let him near the jersey again.

7 Daniel Braid
Daniel Braid's inclusion in this list is in specific relation to one test. Braid has been there or thereabouts for most of his career and no one would doubt he deserved his chance firstly in 2003 and then again last year.

But he also made one appearance against Australia in 2008 - and his selection for that game was impossible to understand. Richie McCaw was injured and, for the first two Tri Nations tests, the All Blacks had shifted regular No 8 Rodney So'oialo to openside.

It was a stopgap measure and, after the All Blacks lost to South Africa in Dunedin, they felt they had to pick a specialist to play Australia in Sydney the following week. Chris Masoe was the obvious choice. He was fit and had been in reasonable form throughout Super Rugby. But the coaches had decided Masoe was no longer for them; that he was no longer up to it.

Instead they brought in Braid who had had been injured for six weeks and had only managed one run with Auckland in an easy pre-season Ranfurly Shield defence.

Desperately short of game-time and conditioning, Braid played in the most aerobically demanding role on the field in what turned out to be a ludicrously demanding test.

The All Blacks decided to run the ball from everywhere and Braid had no chance of keeping up. By 45 minutes he was dead on his feet and the All Blacks had to bring on Sione Lauaki and shift So'oialo back to No 7.

The final result was an easy win for Australia and a return to the wilderness for Braid.

8 Isaia Toeava
That Isaia Toeava is now a must-pick All Black can distort the real picture. He has only just found his feet in test rugby despite making his debut in 2005. Given their time again, the All Black coaches would not have plucked the 19-year-old Toeava from obscurity in 2005 and taken him on their Grand Slam tour.

They underestimated the mental challenge of someone so young and so sheltered being thrust into the test arena on the back of a few provincial games.

Toeava was clearly not ready for test rugby in 2005. He probably wasn't ready in 2006 either but the All Black coaches had decided that Toeava was going to be a star of the 2007 World Cup and could only be so if he gained some experience in the preceding years.

The pressure and expectation placed on Toeava nearly destroyed him and set his development back a couple of years. If he had been left to prove himself in provincial and Super Rugby, he probably would have believed in his right to have been an All Black. He got there in the end but such projects' have not been seen since.

9 Leon MacDonald
A high quality fullback, Leon MacDonald was as surprised as the rest of the nation to be named at first five against the Springboks in 2005.

He had dabbled at No 10 in his younger days but as far as he was concerned that was a chapter in his career that was closed. But Dan Carter had broken his leg in Sydney a couple of weeks before and the All Black coaches weren't sure that young Luke McAlister, despite a promising debut against the British Lions, was ready to run the team in such a critical test.

So they opted for the experience of MacDonald and hoped that playing first five was a bit like riding a bike; that old memories would resurface and it would all come flooding back.

Didn't work out like that. MacDonald was a little tentative and cumbersome, having a clearance charged down early. McAlister came on in the final quarter and rescued the game with his goalkicking and composure.

The strangest part was not that the coaches were reluctant to go with McAlister. It was that they were reluctant to draft in the highly accomplished and polished Nick Evans who had been in good form for the Highlanders and previously proven himself in the test arena.

10 Mils Muliaina
No blame can be placed on Mils Muliaina; he was absolutely not a factor in the quarter-final defeat to France at the last World Cup when he was asked to forfeit his usual berth at fullback to play at centre.

His selection there was not about what it meant for the team on the night - it was about throwing into question the last two years of rotation. The example given by Henry to why they needed to build depth and continually swap the players was that they couldn't get to another World Cup - as was the case in 1999 and 2003 - and be forced to play a regular fullback at centre in a critical knockout game. So the coaches spent two years without once picking the same XV in consecutive tests, only then to select a regular fullback at centre in a critical World Cup knockout game.