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'We've been spoiled': Angus Ta'avao on current state of the All Blacks
By Ben Smith
All Black prop Angus Ta’avao has weighed in on the current state of the All Blacks after two losses to the Springboks in South Africa.
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The 34-year-old, currently in the middle of the NPC campaign with Auckland, expressed optimism despite the final result. The All Blacks were in the contest in both games and had their chances to win both, despite falling away in the final quarter twice.
Although public expectations remain high for the All Blacks after being “spoiled” for over a decade, there was a lot to like about the performances in South Africa.
“I’m a bit more optimistic than you two, yes, and I know the public the expectation of this team, Jeff and you’re looking at me, you’re thinking, hold on, hold on, hold on,” Ta’avao explained on Sky Sport NZ’s The Breakdown.
“But you know, you talk about those margins, and I know the people out there, they’ve got these high expectations of this team to win these games, and we’ve won them in the past.
“We’ll address the last 20 minutes [of the game], but there’s still a lot of good stuff that I’m seeing.”
The All Blacks forward pack performed well at set-piece, holding their own at the scrum, executing well at the lineout, and fixing their maul defence in the second Test.
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Ta’avao shared his own expectations for the All Blacks, admitting he didn’t expect things to click so soon after such a long period of continuity.
“You talked about the current reign and you look at the last regime, it was Graham Henry and Steve Hansen under him, Ian Foster under him,” he said.
“That’s a lot of the same over a ten plus year period, from 2011 to 2019, probably the greatest decade of international rugby from the All Blacks, so we’ve been spoiled with greatness with excellence.
“And we’ve probably come into the last phase of, you know, four years, where we haven’t won these games.
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“We’ve lost to Argentina for the first time, we’ve lost to Ireland for the first time. Razor comes in and he changes things.
“There’s a lot of change in this environment. So I don’t expect… I didn’t expect this to happen straight away, and like you said, it’s not easy, because we’ve been spoiled with this greatness over this long, long tenure.”
The All Blacks have taken a few steps back, which they haven’t really done since 2004. Maybe a bit of a slow decline under Foster, but the All Blacks haven’t had to rebuild quite like they have to now.
I said it at the beginning of the year, to think Razor would cruise in as some messiah and make miracles happen in his first year was silly.
Neh Ben? And you thought they’d cruise to number two in the world? 💩🕳️
The only real criticism I have of Razor so far has been the lack of new players coming through. Trying to rebuild and win everything has lead to conservative selections. You’re dragging out the “rebuild”.
Couldn’t agree more, It was always going to be hard as to emulate the MaCaw Carter years , The Coaches Henry and Professor learnt a lot from the 2007 loss and along with MaCaws ethos and skills developed a togetherness that Rassie and the Bokkes have adapted and developed a awesome winning culture, Sadly Hansen while able to win in 2015 didn't continue that development and Fozzie certainly with his support team didn’t do anything, and while bailing out the furiously sinking ship jettisoned them and took on some real help all that intellect had been lost and Razor has got his hans full trying to rebuild, There are plenty of young followers ? that aren’t used to losing and still expected Razor to just walk in and wave a magic wand and all would be fixed, wrong, its going to only happen with a lot of hard work. But am hoping come 2027 he has built a great team again