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The star players, key facts and who will win: All you need to know about All Blacks vs Wallabies

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

A GUIDE TO THE BLEDISLOE CUP BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND:

When: Sunday, 2pm AEDT/4pm NZT

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Where: Sky Stadium, Wellington.

HEAD-TO-HEAD

Overall: Played 190, All Blacks 133 wins, Wallabies 50 wins, Draws 7.

LAST FIVE MEETINGS

2019: All Blacks 36 beat Wallabies 0 at Eden Park, Auckland

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Dave Rennie, Harry Wilson and Filipo Daugunu speak to media

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Dave Rennie, Harry Wilson and Filipo Daugunu speak to media

2019: Wallabies 47 beat All Blacks 26 at Optus Stadium, Perth

2018: All Blacks 37 beat Wallabies 20 at Yokohama Stadium, Tokyo

2018: All Blacks 40 beat Wallabies 12 at Eden Park, Auckland

2018: All Blacks 38 beat Wallabies 13 at ANZ Stadium, Sydney

THE COACHES

Dave Rennie: The Kiwi returns to his home town for his first test in charge of the Wallabies. He was the Chiefs Super Rugby Coach from 2012-17 winning two titles and making the finals every year in charge. He was most recently at Glasgow Warriors in Scotland.

Ian Foster: Also his first test as head mentor, Foster was All Blacks assistant coach under Steve Hansen (2012-2019). He is also a former Chiefs Super Rugby coach, holding the record for most games coached there with 106, two ahead of Rennie.

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KEY WALLABIES

Marika Koroibete

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Koroibete won the 2019 John Eales Medal as the best Wallabies player. The hard-running winger played the most minutes in 2019 and scored the equal most tries (5) alongside Dane Haylett-Petty.

James O’Connor

O’Connor had the most linebreak assists (12) and try assists (8) in Super Rugby AU while playing in the 10 jersey. Named at No.10 for the fifth time in his Wallabies career and first since the third Lions Test in 2013.

Taniela Tupou 

The bullocking Reds tighthead helped force 47 scrum penalties during the Super Rugby and Super Rugby AU seasons for the Reds. Tupou is starting for just the fourth time in his 19-test career and first since 2018 against Italy.

KEY ALL BLACKS

Beauden Barrett

Named at fullback Barrett has scored the equal most tries ever by an All Black against the Wallabies (11). Nine of these have come in his past six tests.

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Sam Cane

Cane was named as the new All Blacks captain in May, replacing Kieran Read as national skipper. The flanker will go toe-to-toe with Wallabies captain Michael Hooper, who is playing his 100th test.

Hoskins Sotutu

Sotutu will add some punch off the bench. The 22-year-old was a standout during Super Rugby prior to the shutdown, leading all forwards in run metres (492) and equal most linebreaks (7) and tackle busts (20).

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THE STATS

– 2001 was the last time the All Blacks and Wallabies played a day-time test on New Zealand soil, coincidentally this was also the last time the Wallabies defeated the All Blacks in New Zealand winning 23-15 at Carisbrook.

– The All Blacks have only had one win from their past four games at Sky Stadium but have never gone winless in three straight tests at any home venue.

– Six of the past seven Tests have seen the All Blacks win by a margin of 20 points or more.

THE TIP

All Blacks by 13 points.

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AllyOz 1 day 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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