All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has been criticised for the raft of changes he made to the team before the defeat to the Wallabies in Brisbane. Photos / Getty Images, Photosport
All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has been criticised for the raft of changes he made to the team before the defeat to the Wallabies in Brisbane. Photos / Getty Images, Photosport
OPINION:
The numbers are starting to tell the story that a great All Blacks era has come to an end.
If it feels that the team are struggling to win with the same conviction and regularity as they used to, it's because they are.
If it feels like the declinebegan after the All Blacks lost an entirely winnable test against South Africa in 2018, it's because it did.
The numbers produced in the last 20 tests are confirming what has been apparent for the better part of two years now – which is that the All Blacks are experiencing a slow erosion of greatness.
Between late 2009 and September 2018 they produced scarcely believable figures. They were winning 90 per cent of their tests – never lost consecutively and found the most remarkable ways to salvage tests they had no business winning.
After losing to South Africa in Hamilton 2009, the All Blacks embarked upon a decade of excellence. Three times in the next four years they came within a whisker of setting a record for consecutive test victories before they finally did it in 2016.
In that whole period between the defeats to South Africa in 2009 and the loss in Wellington in 2018, the All Blacks won 108 of 120 tests which meant they were undefeated 91 per cent of the time they played.
The All Blacks lost against the Springboks in Wellington in 2018 - a match they should have won. Photo / Getty Images
The record since the All Blacks lost to South Africa in 2018 is a long way off that. They have played 23 tests, lost five and drawn three. Their win ratio is 65 per cent and if we narrow the focus further and look at it since they lost to Ireland in November 2018, it is slightly lower again.
We have to go back to 2008-2009 to find a similar data set to the one produced since November 2018.
In 2008 the All Blacks lost consecutive tests in the Tri-Nations and then the following year, they lost to France in Dunedin before losing three times to South Africa.
Statistically, at least, it feels as if we are back in a similar zone to the one in 2009 and yet the potential of the current team and some of the rugby they have produced hints at them being a legacy generation.
The All Blacks of 2009 were held together by Richie McCaw, Ma'a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Mils Muliaina and an emerging Kieran Read with a fully restored Daniel Carter dragging them out of mediocrity when he returned from injury later in the year.
The potential of that team was hard to see in 2009 and it took the arrival of Owen Franks, Sam Whitelock and the renewed confidence of Jerome Kaino to transform the pack and the selections of Israel Dagg and Cory Jane to give the backs the range of skills they needed to start ripping teams apart.
The potential of the current team seems infinitely higher and easier to pick. The results haven't been great and allude to this being a team in decline but maybe it's a case of a team being rebuilt and having been through the difficult process of learning how to win tight games by a process of losing them first.
Anton Lienert-Brown is consoled by teammates Rieko Ioane and Sevu Reece after the final whistle at Suncorp Stadium at the weekend. Photo / Getty Images
The All Blacks have been in transition since the middle of 2018. They started to see a handful of players such as Ben Smith, Owen Franks, Ryan Crotty and Sonny Bill Williams regress and the new ones such as Jack Goodhue, Richie Mo'unga, Nepo Laulala and Jordie Barrett battle to find their way into test football.
Because of form and injury, they had to chop and change their set-up, never quite sure of their preferred line-up, with the picture further muddied by the fact they were short of a genuine blindside.
The defeat in Brisbane was one of the poorer All Blacks displays of the last two years such was the lack of control, patience and discipline and as much as that illustrates a lack of maturity and mental resilience, it also highlighted that the selectors had overdone the changes in regards to the personnel.
All Blacks head coach Ian Foster was a visibly disappointed man following the Brisbane defeat. Photo / Photosport
And paradoxically, while that cost the All Blacks in Brisbane, it will presumably have the longer term benefit of having established what the first team now looks like and has paved the way for Ian Foster to spend the next three years refining it and building their individual and collective experience.
So the question is whether the numbers point to the nadir having been reached and the future being considerably brighter than it may seem or whether the All Blacks are still in the midst of a decline that has some way to go yet before the collective experience is built to the point where they can win more regularly than they currently are.
