All Blacks coach Ian Foster runs through drills during a training session. Photo / Getty Images
All Blacks coach Ian Foster runs through drills during a training session. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
There’s a distinct possibility, now that the All Blacks have had their first encounter of 2023, that they might be on the verge of doing the impossible and turning up in France as a virtually unknown quantity.
The All Blacks, the best-known and most analysed team on the planet,shouldn’t be able to reach a Rugby World Cup with their opponents uncertain about what they could be facing, and yet the scale of the team’s tactical reinvention in Mendoza was so great as to suggest they are going to be playing a brand of rugby that bears little to no resemblance to what they have produced in the last few years.
That the All Blacks have managed to get this close to a World Cup without anyone really knowing who they are is not part of some carefully orchestrated master plan, but rather, quite the happy accident.
Ian Foster came into the head coaching role in late 2019 with the ambition to re-energise and redefine the All Blacks.
He wanted them to be more direct, more physical and more robust. But for multiple reasons, mostly because he wasn’t able to surround himself with the right calibre of coaching personnel, the All Blacks regressed into a softer, more confused version of their previous selves.
Foster’s vision became misunderstood and certainly unfulfilled, and for the last three years, the All Blacks have relied on much the same ideas and patterns they have for the last decade - giving them an element of predictability.
By November last year, the arrival of Jason Ryan as forwards coach and Joe Schmidt as attack coach had at least enabled the All Blacks to present as a tougher team to beat.
They were still largely playing the same way with the same players, but they were executing with more purpose and efficiency.
But now the revolution has seemingly occurred. Having had longer to influence selection and strategy, Ryan and Schmidt have been able to play a key role in revolutionising the All Blacks.
Their influence has been to specifically toughen the forwards and straighten the running lines, but these two can’t be credited as the architects of this new-look All Blacks team.
They have been working toward Foster’s vision, building him the patterns, plays and basic principles that he wants - and maybe the most valuable thing their arrival has done is unleash the full power of the head coach.
All Blacks head coach Ian Foster (centre) with assistants Joe Schmidt (left) and Jason Ryan. Photo / Photosport
Who knows how the team were working in 2020 and 2021, but with two assistant coaches underperforming the way they were, it presumably pulled Foster away from his core role.
The system only works when everyone is pulling their weight, and maybe what we all saw in the first two years of his tenure was Foster-lite - a head coach being stretched too far by having to cover for others.
Obviously Foster never intended for the All Blacks to bumble their way through the first two-and-a-bit seasons of his tenure and incur the reputational damage that they did, but the silver lining of it all is that the team now carries a significant element of surprise.
The likes of France, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and Scotland will need to rethink what they might be facing, as New Zealand’s attack strategy in Mendoza was like a Jonathan Franzen novel, in that it was at times impossible to follow or to predict.
Virtually all the tried and tested patterns were nowhere to be seen. The three-man pod system was conspicuous by its absence. That’s been their go-to starting mechanism for as long as anyone can remember, and while it may not have been given the boot as such, the All Blacks have shown they can attack quite brilliantly without using it.
The pod system, which was revolutionary when it was first introduced, had become more of a liability than an asset for the All Blacks, such was its predictability.
In the opening test of last year, the All Blacks jazzed things up by using Aaron Smith to fire a longer pass to the widest of the three runners in the pod, but it took Ireland one game to suss out how to stop that being effective.
What we saw in Mendoza was the All Blacks forwards producing an array of short passes in and around the contact areas, and close to the ruck in particular. They were supremely good at offloading before or in contact to punch holes.
There was an obvious desire to get the ball in the hands of either Beauden Barrett or Damian McKenzie, rather than work them into plays via the back door pass coming from some lumbering forward, and Aaron Smith was on red alert to attack the blindside.
The bottom line was that Argentina, one of the game’s better defensive teams, were made to look clueless at times, such was the efficiency and variation of the All Blacks attack.
Live commentary of All Blacks v South Africa at Mount Smart Stadium on Newstalk ZB, Gold Sport and iHeartRadio; coverage from 6pm, Saturday 15 July.
