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Stevenson on All Black radar but Foster name drops another potential Chiefs' bolter

(Photo by Dave Rowland/Getty Images)

All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has revealed that the selectors are ‘looking hard’ at outside back options across Super Rugby Pacific.

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A season-ending ACL injury to Crusaders winger Sevu Reece has the All Blacks looking at a potential replacement on the right wing.

Foster confirmed in a wide-ranging interview with Stuff.co.nz that Chiefs’ fullback Shaun Stevenson is being considered.

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Super Rugby’s top try scorer featured in the No 14 jersey on Friday night against the Fijian Drua and scored his eighth of the season.

The All Black head coach also dropped another surprise name in contention, Stevenson’s teammate at the Chiefs.

“We’re always open to people coming in late,” Foster told Stuff.co.nz.

“We probably saw that a little bit with Mark Telea on the end-of-year tour.

“There is still scope for that. The outside backs we’re really interested in. There are people that we’re looking at hard.

“You’ve got the likes of Sean Stevenson, who has played well. I’ve been impressed with Emoni Narawa, I think he’s played well.

“There’s some guys sending in some good messages and they’ve just to carry on doing that.

“They’ve just got to keep showing that they’re really keen to make the next step.”

Emoni Narawa is a shock candidate who has featured five times for the Chiefs this season and scored four tries, including a double against his old club the Blues.

The 23-year-old debuted for the Blues in 2020 but after just seven apperances over two seasons made the transfer south to the Chiefs.

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Despite the loss of Reece, the All Blacks have a number of options available.

Blues right wing Mark Telea made his debut against Scotland and scored a double in his first Test start.

He has been one of Super Rugby Pacific’s most dangerous runners, currently second on the list of top line breaks with 12 behind teammate Caleb Clarke who has 16.

Crusaders fullback Will Jordan is expected to return to action soon and has been used almost exclusively on the right wing with the All Blacks. He has a blistering scoring record with 21 tries in 21 Tests.

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J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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