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Tamaiti Williams offers heartfelt perspective on departure of TJ Perenara

TJ Perenara and Tamaiti Williams of the All Blacks. Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Two All Blacks icons will bid their respective careers in the black jersey farewell this weekend, with loose forward Sam Cane and halfback TJ Perenara each taking their talents to the land of the rising sun from 2025 onwards.

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The pair boast nearly 200 Test caps between them, and were both a part of New Zealand’s victorious 2015 Rugby World Cup campaign as 23-year-olds. Beauden Barrett will remain as the last member of the team with a World Cup win to his name.

Their experience and leadership have rubbed off on the new generation coming through the ranks, including 24-year-old prop Tamaiti Williams.

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Williams, a man of few words, is one the young guns in Scott Robertsons’s All Blacks squad who has staked his claim in the starting XV in 2024, and as a proud Maori with Ngapuhi lineage, has formed a special admiration for his veteran teammates.

“I’ll be pretty emotional when they leave. What TJ’s done for Maori people in New Zealand and the way he helps others is inspiring to me. Sammy Cane’s the same, he was our captain last year and I can only think of one way to send them out: with a dominant performance,” the 140kg prop told media from Turin, Italy, as fellow youngster Wallace Sititi sat beside him nodding in agreement.

“I’m sure they’re probably going to hold their emotions until the end of the week. They’re walking around smiling today, I think they’re just soaking it in. Hopefully, we can do a job for them.”

It’s yet to be revealed whether or not the pair will suit up for the upcoming Italy Test. Questions remain over Cane’s fitness after suffering a gnarly flesh wound on his forehead against Ireland, while Perenara is yet to see minutes in the Autumn Nations Series as youngsters Cam Roigard and Cortez Ratima are favoured in the matchday 23.

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Team Form

Last 5 Games

3
Wins
4
1
Streak
1
15
Tries Scored
20
3
Points Difference
74
2/5
First Try
3/5
4/5
First Points
0/5
2/5
Race To 10 Points
4/5

The team is building a new identity and the changing of the guard continues after a 2023 exodus which saw household names like Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick, Dane Coles and Aaron Smith hang up their international boots.

But with new a coaching cohort at the helm, Williams suggests there’s a real growth mindset in the environment. The prop was emphatic when asked if the side are tracking well after some disappointing results in 2024, saying “of course” they are.

“I’ll back my boys and the coaching staff any day of the week. I guess for us, in my second year and (Wallace Sititi’s) first year, what we’ve learned alone as players is pretty cool bro.

“There has been a lot of change, but everyone in here has embraced it. There’s no excuses and when you wake up in the morning and you can’t wait to go to work, your team’s in a good place.”

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While Sititi wasn’t asked the same question about the departing duo, he did speak on Cane’s influence within the All Blacks group and on himself personally when it became apparent the former captain would be sidelined for last week’s France Test.

“He’s a big loss for us this weekend, he holds a lot of respect in our team. He’s a strong figure in our team and our country, so to not have him out there is a big loss for us in terms of leadership as well as experience,” Sititi told media in Paris.

“It’s just something that we’re going to have to deal with and we’ll do our best to do him justice in his absence.”

He went on to elaborate on Cane’s leadership in the Chiefs environment, where the two first connected.

“When I went in for my first preseason with the Chiefs, he’s someone that’s calm-headed, loves to chat as well so it was really easy getting along with him. He’s just somebody you gravitate towards, someone you would follow into war and somebody you would die for.

“he’s just a good person first and foremost and his leadership is top-notch.”

Go behind the scenes of both camps during the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa in 2021. Binge watch exclusively on RugbyPass TV now 

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Comments

4 Comments
S
SM 40 days ago

Cane Tj and Reiko plus Dmac what's the point, we wasted a hole season.

S
SC 41 days ago

Codie Taylor was on the RWC 2015 winning team in addition to Beauden Barrett.

C
Cantab 41 days ago

Sadly the time comes to all players when they must gracefully bow out. Sayonara and thank you to Cane & Perenara, your contributions to All Black rugby have been great

T
Tk 41 days ago

Two players who haven't always been first choice in their positions but have embodied the "team first" attitude and have always been there when needed.

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AllyOz 19 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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