Kyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The All Blacks have taken a giant step backwards in a forty three to ten crushing at the hands of South Africa in Wellington. It's their worst ever defeat, shipping six tries to one after leading ten to seven at halftime. The performance has prompted questions about the team's ability to recover
and deliver consistent, high quality showings. So what does this record breaking display mean for the future of the All Blacks. Today on the Front Page, former All Black turned commentator and Strawn is with us to discuss the weekend, the consequences and the future of our team. First off, Strawnie, tell me about this record loss in Wellington, what do you make of it?
Well, it was disappointing, I guess as a New Zealander overall. But I think one of the key things, and I haven't heard it too much in the last forty eight hours, is that there are now six nations in the top tier in world rugby who are actually really close now and historically the All Blacks have been cut above the rest.
So our percentages. Winning percentages are very high.
But now you'll see in the last two or three years that if a team is a bit off in one or two or a number of areas of the game, they can be beaten by any team. And of course the home and away advantage is consistent too, So that's probably the biggest thing. I mean, we need to acknowledge that, not accept it, because we have very high standards for our all Black team. But you know, I think it's
important that we do talk and acknowledge that fact. You know, the world rugby particular, those big nations have caught.
Up with us.
And so because those other nations have gotten better and we started up here, right, why haven't we gotten better as the years go on.
Well, you know people will say, well, have we stagnated? And I don't think so. I mean, we've got some wonderful domestic competitions in New Zealand now Super Rugby competition is right up there in terms of you know, weekly
opportunity for our players to develop. And then of course that last stepping stones into international there's probably two or three areas where we probably haven't kept pace with those top teams, and it's the physical nature, not only the physiological piece, but just the size of these men we are playing against. And you know, New Zealanders aren't small, and obviously it's a multi racial society. We have you know, players them all around the world that live in now reside.
In New Zealand.
But we just manned for man Now, we just don't seem to match up physically. So that's something that I guess can be addressed in a gymnasium. It might be to do with nutrition, and it could be a whole raft of factors. But they are big men. When you look at a French team, a South African team, an English team, now.
You know we are no longer towering over them. We are in fact often smaller.
So over an eighty minute period, that physical confrontation will take its toll, particularly if your players are slightly smaller, you know. So I'd say that's the biggest thing. And also now the analytical part of the game. It's so easy to access how other teams are playing, and I know there are teams and screeds of people who take a deep dive into their opposition that they're about to
play in the coming weekend. So that also means that teams are way better prepared to potentially expose some of your weaknesses or perceived weaknesses, and you know, the All Black team are always heavily scrutinized in that space. So they're probably the two biggest ones for Mike.
In terms of weakness. Is what did the All Blacks show the weekend? What were our biggest weaknesses?
It's a good question.
I sort of joddled down a few things, but I think we still have some positional issues. So when you look at a squad and this is a developing squad as they head towards the twenty twenty seven World Cup, across the board, you know we are still trying and developing our style that fits a certain profile of athlete, and I think on the weekend we all saw that at set piece, So at scrum time we really started to struggle, particularly in the second half.
And the greatest irony here is.
That we have a tight head prop to Mighty Williams, who's tall one hundred and forty kilos, but he almost sits behind now the two or three South African props that they roll off their bench because he's no longer the biggest guy and he's got maybe some technical and
tactical deficiencies in his game too. So at scrum time we struggle and as you probably know, set piece is where you start a lot of your back from so and also line out time they started to pick us off as well, so you're almost cutting off a source of ball and the ability to attack at scrum and line out.
They really did hit us hard there.
Then you could go through the team in terms of players, I mean, without being too critical, I think Scott Barrett still is deserving of an All Black jersey, but I just wonder whether if you take the captaincy away from him, whether he'll actually.
Be able to just focus on his positional role do his job.
He's a big boy, he's good arealy, he's good at moving bodies both sides of the ball, attack, defense, but he seems to be way down with the captaincy. And we all know how good Ardie Savi. I mean, he's a wonderful player anyway, world class, but he grows another
leg when they give him the captaincy. So maybe a shift back to that particular scenario, and then you know, you have a number of players that are still pretty young in terms of their test match experience as Simon has been really good, but he's only played three or full Test matches while a Cetidi's coming back off an
injury and are very dominant twenty twenty four. Now he's starting to be dominated in some respects because again he's not the biggest number eight running around and he's just coming to his game again after getting more pressure put on him. Our halves nine and ten always under conjecture, and no, I hope it didn't last too long on the weekend, hadn't played a game for six weeks without a smart decision to put him out there.
Finley, Christie did his best.
The viewers and listeners won't like this comment, but Boden Barrett's paid over one hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty Test matches, such a wonderful servant and admirable the
way he's played and conducted himself this year. But I just wonder if we looked at twenty twenty seven, you know, is he the triple threat offense defense and his ability to run the game like he used to be And where's he going to be in six to twelve to eighteen months time to now start sort of rolling the dice a bit and bringing a younger player into that critical ten, the pivotal spot.
They're talking about bringing Richie Muhanga back.
We know how good he is, but again, you know, he hasn't always been at his very best at the highest international level, and that's what we're talking about now playing South Africa, playing France, England, et cetera.
So the midfield potentially still not set.
You know.
My preference was to sort of give Quintupire and Billy Procter a shot in the midfield, put Jordi Barrett back to full back where he's more comfortable, and probably the other area of the game on the weekend other than a lot of these sort of positional challenges we have
was our back three. Defensively, the South African team just cut us up in that second half, so I know they'll have some work to do defensively, and also aerially that's been well documented now that we're still kind of losing that aerial battle and at the highest level used a lot as an offensive weapon, So you know, in summary, a lot of things there to sort of stew over.
But yeah, that's probably the key things for mine.
I've seen some commentary and you suggested it as well, that the All Blacks have been way too inconsistent and that the Abs just don't fall over like that in the second half. I mean, it was incredible to watch that second half. Should we be questioning what's happening behind the scenes.
Well yeah, I mean it's a good question.
And you know, as every New Zealander will be doing over the next sort of forty eight hours, you know, you take a deep dive into some of these things, some of these areas of the game. My philosophy always is more sort of solution focused rather than firing shots. I was blessed to wear the jersey myself, so I'm not here to fire shots at specific people. But you've got to look, you know, and you got to be honest.
And I think defensively, you know, we get up one week to eat and part test defending the fortress was phenomenal, you know, and defense is a lot about integrity. It's understanding a system and defending for each other and just keep on going even though you might be losing a physical battle, but you just don't take a backward step. You work hard to get you try and slow the ball down. You try and the gate and blunt any attack that you see, and also try and diffuse.
The kicking game as well.
But when our team starts getting on a roll, and in that second half, the South African team went bang bang. They then led by fourteen points, and our defensive integrity across the paddock just seemed to drop off. It's hard to reset and recalibrate to go, hey, boys, we are losing this battle. What are we going to do individually collectively to kind of turn the tables of it and get back into this game? And I just felt that
we were not able to do that. And it could be a whole raft of different reasons there, but you know, we really struggled, and of course we let in some very soft tries at the back end, which is completely
uncharacteristic for all black teams, you know, forever. That could well be the biggest challenge for them in these next two weeks is just to get their defense of mojo back, acknowledging that they're not going to dominate a game for eighty minutes defensively, because at some point in time, the offense is going to get you and you're just going to have to absorb that try and find a solution
and come back again. So now that was a big thing for mine defensively because you know you would have heard this sole cliche, but you know, defense wins chairmianships basically nowadays, and we went at our defensive best.
On the weekend, I saw of peace from the heralds Gregor Paul and he said the All Blacks showed their true selves and we need to get used to it.
Do you agree with that?
Well, it's a pretty ambiguous statement. You know, what is your true self?
You know?
For me, the true self of being an All Black is you respect the jersey on and off the field, and when you run onto the field, you know exactly what your job is because you've been selected to do it job. And then how well you work with your brothers and connect and die for the jersey?
You know? And I mean you have eighty minutes.
You are blessed to have eighty minutes to prove to yourself, your family, your teammates and everyone that you deserve to be there and be legit.
Do you reckon have lost a bit of that manner?
I don't think so. I mean, if you look at every player, man for man, they would have been hurting after the weekend, and I probably just hope that when they review this game, and let's say hypothetically, you're walking into a changing room after a pretty heavy defeat and the hurt was there, you could see and raise a Robinson really tough for him to front the media after suffering a loss like that as the leading coach, that they have a good look in the mirror because you've
got to look at yourself first, and I'm sure every one of the players that were on the field on the weekend will be looking in the mirror going, hey, I got a things wrong and that's not who I am, and that's not how I train, and that's not how I want to perform. So I know that sounds a bit idealistic, but at the end of the day, if players are doing that, then you can get back on your horse in time because everyone acknowledges that you know,
they can perform a lot better. And of course the coaches have got to do the same and to be blunted, you know, the news in a public at time, and I look in the mirror too and go, hey, do you understand where rugby landscape is in the world nowadays? And again, not conceding but acknowledging that every single Test match we play against those top tier nations, it's not going to be a walkover anymore. It's going to be a excuse my friends. It's going to be a shit fight.
Every week. And you know that's that's going to be an ongoing challenge for us.
I felt like the second half you couldn't buy when I started going, yeah, fully droppers, et cetera. Can you put your finger on how it unrippled?
Not right at the moment. Something we didn't be able to look at it. And obviously you'll find it pretty quickly, little big Pislow coming in, do you reckon?
People are right to question whether Razors should be there or not after just this one defeat.
Well, we have a habit in New Zealand of you know, things aren't going too well. Fire the coach Fozzy, you know, he suffered immensely in that space, you know, and there was some really objective discussions around potentially shifting from Fozzy to the next group. Razor had already been sitting in the wings with his highly successful Cannaby Crusaders Rain.
You know.
But there's a step to the international standard and the News and Rugby Union made the decision to do that based on a whole raft of factors, and we don't often see those, but we see the end product, which is what runs out the tunnel and delivers it on a weekly basis. And also as importantly, how well these
men conduct themselves in the community. And you know, Raises a cultural person who's innovative and keeps trying to find ways for players and teams to connect, and he respects that All Black Jersey people will argue, maybe we're giving him longer time because of his super rugby success than we did to Ian Foster.
Well, to me, it's probably too soon.
But you know, if a team continues to show weaknesses and poor performances, you know over a calendar year, I think you're better to always ascertain at the back end, have a strong you do it in the right way, and then say well, hey, look, you know, is this group is this leader the one to take us through to twenty twenty seven because we've still got some time here. You know, Quis are like, we're pretty hard when it
comes to pointing the finger. I mean, look at Nolan told her, and I don't for one minute understand what happened there. But you know, she went from being you know, Dame Nolean to being someone who's been moved out the side.
So they'll have their reasons.
It's tough, classic tall poppy syndrome. Hey, do you reckon that all blacks have enough depth to take us into twenty twenty seven or is that somewhere where we really need to work on.
Oh, you hit the nail on the head.
You know, that's one of the biggest concerns for me because you often hear RASI Erasmus, and I thought they actually conducted themselves pretty well on the weekend with the victory, because that had a bit of stuff shoved at them over the last seven days prior to Wellington, and they are very good at this.
That's mart with how they respond.
And one of the things that flowed through for me really extensively was he talked about the squad of forty five, and when he's talking about the squad of forty five, he's not being pc that they have forty five players who are humming to wear the Springbok jersey, and so he's creating depth in every single position. And I'm not convinced that we're in the same boat. I don't think we have forty five. I'm not quite sure executly the number of players who are in this awkabat all back camp.
I think it's about thirty two or thirty four, you know, but forty five is three teams. So you're saying in every position you're building and grooming and developing three players. You know, we can look at some of the players in our current team.
We look at our.
Nines, we get our tens, look at our midfielders, fullbacks. You know, if we overlaid that forty five player process, have we got three lined up in every spot and obviously in the front road a few more because you've got to even elucian and a tidy head prop.
So that's a challenge for us.
And look, there is a big gap between super rugby and international rugby and that's where our players come from.
So how much of a layer are we going.
To pull through from super rugby to have our squad at forty five doesn't have to be forty five, but the context is around having more rather than less.
Thanks for joining us, Strawnie.
No worries, take care.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.