Richie Mo'unga and Beauden Barrett. Photo / Photosport
Richie Mo'unga and Beauden Barrett. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Four years ago the All Blacks implemented a double play-maker strategy, convinced that it was going to become the key to unleashing their attack game at the 2019 World Cup against the perennial rush defences they were encountering.
It never quite worked though. There were games, and periods withingames, when Richie Mo’unga and Beauden Barrett combined elegantly and seamlessly, but theirs was a partnership that predominantly felt clunky and a little contrived.
When it failed to deliver much at all in the semi-final defeat to England, it was quietly shelved by incoming head coach Ian Foster.
It became an option, rather than the preferred option and effectively filed in the failed experiment category.
But here we are now on the eve of the 2023 World Cup and the partnership has suddenly blossomed, and far from being a failed experiment, now looks one of the smartest ideas the All Blacks have had in the last five years.
Barrett and Mo’unga have found a way to work with each other, to instinctively read where the other is going and what the situation needs.
The improved physical approach this year has been the foundation of the All Blacks’ improvement, but Barrett and Mo’unga have pulled all the right levers and called all the right shots to capitalise on the opportunities with which they have been presented.
It’s never easy to know why a partnership that hadn’t previously worked is now humming along in near perfect harmony.
It could just be time - that having played more together, Barrett and Mo’unga understand each other better.
But it feels like there is more to it than that, most notably that the biggest difference now compared with four years ago, being that Mo’unga is a significantly better test No 10.
It’s all easy too easy to forget that Mo’unga only made his debut in 2018 and had barely started a test in the No 10 jersey prior to the 2019 World Cup.
The All Blacks celebrate Richie Mo'unga's try. Photo / Getty Images
He was young, inexperienced and finding his way as a test first five-eighths - a hard enough job without having to work out how Barrett was supposed to co-jointly fit into the play-making picture.
And at that time, so too was it hard for Barrett to know his business as a second rather than primary receiver.
He’d waited four years for his chance to win the No 10 jersey, and when it came in 2016, he took it so well that he was named World Player of the Year, and again in 2017.
For those two years, and indeed throughout 2018, the All Blacks were trying to put the ball through Barrett’s hands whenever they could.
He was so magical, so difficult for defences to tie down, that everything the All Blacks did was about trying to give him the ball and the time and space to make the attack game happen.
To then shift to fullback and be asked to take on the role of second fiddle was a hard adjustment, and the combination of Mo’unga’s lack of experience and Barrett’s hard-wiring to do everything were difficult to overcome.
But Mo’unga has matured and developed into a world class first five, with the confidence to impose himself and the skillset to manage the overall gameplan.
He’s no longer lacking in confidence - no longer of a mind-set that he has to pay deference to the more senior Barrett, and it was interesting that Wallabies coach Eddie Jones made unprompted reference to the growth of Mo’unga after seeing the All Blacks No 10 play an instrumental role in the 38-7 Bledisloe Cup win in Melbourne.
“They are pretty good,” Jones said when he was asked what he thought of this particular All Blacks team, having seen plenty of them over the years.
“I can remember maybe two passes that didn’t go to hand. They were patient when they had the ball and then when they broke, their support play was outstanding.
“I thought Mo’unga kicked well, he’s turning into a proper test 10 isn’t he? His ability to instil the attack but keep the pressure on through good tactical kicking.”
And then when he was asked about the performance of his own No 10, Carter Gordon, who had a mixed night in what was his first start in the role, Jones said: “I have seen Mo’unga play tests like that. If you look at Mo’unga, in his first 45 tests, he had a bit of up and down, he wasn’t good enough and then he was good enough and sometimes you have got to go through a bit of pain to bring players through.”
Time has indeed been helpful and while it didn’t quite work in 2019, the double-maker thing might just reap rewards four years later than planned.
