Malcolm Marx of South Africa and Samisoni Taukei'aho face off during the Rugby Championship. Photo / Photosport
Malcolm Marx of South Africa and Samisoni Taukei'aho face off during the Rugby Championship. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Whatever happens to the All Blacks at next year's World Cup, they won't have any recourse to say they arrived in France lacking match hardness.
Confirmation that the All Blacks will play South Africa in London, two weeks before they face France in the opening game of the WorldCup, has signalled that the national team is eager to frontload its preparation next year, knowing that the pool rounds feature too many soft games to truly harden them before the knockout rounds.
The All Blacks will open their season against Australia in Melbourne next year, with the Wallabies coming to Dunedin the week after. A trip to Argentina to play the Pumas will follow, before taking on the Springboks at Mount Smart Stadium to complete the Rugby Championship.
The game against the Boks falls during the period when Fifa has exclusive, World Cup access to Eden Park, Sky Stadium, Forsyth Barr Stadium and FMG Stadium in Hamilton – and it's partly this inability to access these major grounds which drove NZR to look at offshore venues for a final warm-up test for the All Blacks.
Taking the game offshore also opened a longer-list or prospective opposition as typically, the only teams willing and able to play a game in New Zealand so close to the World Cup would be those already in the vicinity and that typically is the Pacific Island nations.
In 2011, the All Blacks played Fiji, in 2015 it was Samoa and in 2019 it was Tonga. But with the exception of the 2015 encounter, those two other games failed to test the All Blacks and the match in 2019 was a 92-7 romp that served virtually no purpose.
It was one soft game too many, because after the All Blacks had beaten the Springboks in their opening pool game at the 2019 tournament, they then had easy wins against Namibia and Canada, before their final encounter against Italy was cancelled due to a typhoon.
The draw for next year's tournament is much the same as it was in 2019, in that the All Blacks will open with their toughest challenge – a clash against France in Paris – before taking on Namibia, Italy and Uruguay.
The decision to seek a final warm-up clash in London, opened the prospect of playing South Africa, who were also in the market for a tough game in that part of the world and means the All Blacks will play back-to-back fixtures against the Springboks before taking on France.
Damian Willemse of South Africa tackles the All Blacks' Jordie Barrett during the Rugby Championship clash earlier this year. Photo / Photosport
Where this preparation route could become hugely intriguing is if the All Blacks find themselves playing the Boks again in the quarter-finals.
That's a distinct possibility as the winner of Pool A which contains New Zealand and France, plays the runner-up of Pool B, which contains South Africa, Ireland and Scotland.
And it's the reverse for the winner of Pool B – as they will play the runner-up in Pool A and so its entirely understandable, and perhaps smart campaign management, that the All Blacks want to be battle-hardened ahead of the knock-out rounds.
The pool round simply isn't going to offer the All Blacks enough competitive, brutal rugby so they have chosen to find it elsewhere before the tournament.
It was also one of the rare occasions when high-performance needs intersected commercial interests.
The All Blacks coaches were in search of a tough game and New Zealand Rugby was in search of more income as World Cup years are always financially tough given the lack of home tests and the impact this has on ticket and broadcast revenue.
Income next year is also going to be impacted by playing the Boks at Mt Smart – which has a smaller capacity and yield than the preferred Eden Park.
But a test at Twickenham, which holds 82,000 seats, played under a revenue-sharing agreement with the South Africans, could net NZR anything between $4m to $6m depending on the terms they have struck.
It's money in the bank and game-time in the legs and the only risk the All Blacks are taking with this plan, is potentially leaving themselves low on energy by the last two weeks of the World Cup.
But that's a risk they will happily take, as they have been handed a draw which gives them no choice but to focus everything on being ready to win what will be the toughest quarter-final they have ever faced.
If they run out of juice in the semifinal, so be it, but they won't make it that far if they haven't readied themselves appropriately for that quarter-final clash.
