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All Blacks call up Josh Ioane ahead of Bledisloe Cup II as Beauden Barrett missing from training

(Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Highlanders and Otago first-five Josh Ioane has been called in to train with the All Blacks squad ahead of their second Bledisloe Cup match against the Wallabies in Auckland this Sunday.

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The one-test playmaker, who featured in Otago’s 35-34 win over Wellington on Saturday, was spotted training with Ian Foster’s side three days after they drew 16-all with Australia in their first match of the year at Sky Stadium.

The call-up comes as Beauden Barrett was notably absent from All Blacks training on Wednesday morning, according to 1 News.

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Barrett was named to start at fullback last weekend but was scratched on the eve of the match with an Achilles tendon injury that was expected to only rule him out for that test.

Replaced in the starting lineup by Chiefs star Damian McKenzie, Barrett was reportedly still with the team on Wednesday, but trained away from the group.

His absence will raise doubts over whether he will be fit to play this weekend as the All Blacks look to maintain a 34-year undefeated run against the Wallabies at Eden Park.

Should he remain unavailable, it would likely Richie Mo’unga would stay in the No. 10 jersey, with Ioane a possibility to take part in the match day squad.

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Ioane’s provincial teammate Liam Coltman was also seen training with the All Blacks, adding to the national side’s hooker contingent that also consists of Codie Taylor, Dane Coles and Asafo Aumua.

A further two All Blacks who have been ruled out due to injury over the past few months – Ngani Laumape and Scott Barrett – were also present at the team’s training on Wednesday.

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AllyOz 23 hours ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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