All Blacks need to get on a winning streak

The All Blacks celebrate after Beauden Barrett’s try during the Rugby Championship game against Argentina at FMG Waikato Stadium in Hamilton.
Photo: Jeremy Ward / PhotoSport

Opinion – The All Blacks must overcome more than just the Wallabies in Melbourne this week, with a lack of consistency proving to be the greatest obstacle in this year’s race for the Rugby Championship.

Loss, win, loss, win. This is what consistent inconsistency looks like for the All Blacks so far in the 2022 Rugby Championship, a tournament that is still wide open due to the other sides playing in more or less the exact same manner.

But it’s not just the final score lines that have defined the performances so far. The losses in Mbombela and Christchurch were flat, then followed by resounding victories the week later in Johannesburg and Hamilton. The reactive nature of those wins is at least a tick in the positive column for the All Blacks’ coaching staff, given that there is ample evidence that much was learned from the previous results, but only winning one out of every two games isn’t acceptable – even if it retains the Bledisloe Cup.

Reactivity needs to turn back into proactivity, which was something Ian Foster acknowledged in the team hotel on Melbourne’s Southbank.

“I feel like we’re getting there,” he said, after naming a team that only had injury-enforced changes.

“The team’s been training really well, and we’re primed and ready to go.”

Winger Will Jordan, who has struggled in the last few tests to reach the admittedly prolific heights that have defined his young career so far, said that while they had “bounced back pretty well from losses”, a lot of their focus had been on understanding the way the Wallabies have been playing.

“It’s about knowing the different subtleties that they have compared to the Argies and Africans. So then when we make in-game adjustments, they’ll change theirs up too and show us things we haven’t seen.”

To be honest, the press conference going on up in Brisbane for the Wallaby team naming was probably sounding exactly the same (they had decided to base themselves there until the day before each of their tests so far this season). The two teams have gone through a very similar path to reach this point, with home series losses to Northern Hemisphere teams before splitting the spoils with the Pumas and Springboks.

There’s certainly been enough good rugby produced by Dave Rennie’s side so far this year to warrant some worry, especially when coupled with how poor the All Blacks have shown themselves to be. So it’s likely both of those performances would need to be on display for the Wallabies to pull off an upset, given that injuries have led to a recall for veteran first five Bernard Foley, who not only hasn’t played a test in three years, but any sort of rugby at all since his Japanese Top League stint ended in May.

That’s not all – Foley will be partnered by Jake Gordon at halfback and there’s a nice local touch by having an all-Rebels backrow in Rob Leota, Pete Samu and Rob Valetini. It will be interesting to see how Hoskins Sotutu, who has played barely any rugby himself over the past few months thanks to there simply not being any room for him in the match day squad, handles the situation in the absence of Ardie Savea.

Of course, we are in AFL-obsessed Melbourne, a city where newspaper coverage of the queen’s death almost reached the level of Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy getting the sack earlier this season. A shade over 90,000 packed into the MCG on Saturday night for a preliminary final between Collingwood and Fremantle. But still, Rugby Australia is confident of a mostly packed Marvel Stadium for the first midweek Bledisloe Cup test since 1994.

That was a game remembered for George Gregan’s famous game-winning tackle on Jeff Wilson, in an era of All Black rugby that is remembered as being a bit of a rollercoaster time by the team’s standards. They had bombed out of the 1991 World Cup, suffered home losses to France, the Lions and (somehow) a World XV, while beating the Springboks and regaining the Bledisloe Cup.

It was lost again that night in Sydney, thanks to Gregan’s heroics. But it is worth noting that after that result, that All Black side went on to do some pretty special things.