Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

'There was no real pressure on those combinations': Questions remain over All Blacks attack

Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images

A winning start to the All Blacks‘ Rugby Championship campaign has been met with mixed acclaim as fans and pundits attempt to discern how much credit New Zealand’s performance deserves and equally, how poor Los Pumas’ performance was.

ADVERTISEMENT

A Man of the Match performance from Jordie Barrett was one of many strong outings from the Kiwi side, but one former All Black is opting to reserve judgement until there’s a bigger sample size due to the one-sided nature of the first Test of the season.

Josh Kronfeld has 54 Test appearances to his name and while the former flanker is satisfied with how the All Blacks have developed their identity over the past year, he’s adamant about not jumping to conclusions without seeing the team dominate against a more heavy-weight opposition.

Video Spacer

Video Spacer

The upcoming Test against the Springboks will no doubt offer further context to the state of the team ahead of the World Cup, and offer the new midfield partnership perhaps their greatest challenge yet.

“Although our midfield was sensational and Jordie (Barrett) was second to none today, there was no real pressure on that combination,” Kronfeld told SENZ.

“All of the tries we scored and the moves we ran seemed to be from our structural set piece and stuff, and we didn’t really get phase after phase play up the field, we either ran a couple of phases or we broke the line.

“So there’s still questions there and I’m curious and excited to see how that develops over the next few games.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Related

Those next few games come against more established rivals in the Springboks and Wallabies, the latter of which poses a somewhat unpredictable threat under the leadership of Eddie Jones and a poor first outing in Pretoria only adds to the mystery of the team’s trajectory.

The combination of Damian De Allende and Lukhanyo Am awaits whoever Ian Foster selects for Saturday’s match, the Springbok duo have formed a destructive partnership and have only grown since their World Cup-winning effort four years ago.

It will be a distinct step up from round one’s challenge against a struggling Los Pumas outfit. Former All Black Israel Dagg was scathing of the Argentinian performance, telling SENZ:

“Argentina in that first 40 were just non-existent, they were very very poor. But, they were made to look poor from a clinical All Blacks side.”

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

2 Comments
J
Jimmy 482 days ago

The same thing can be said about the Boks combinations. This week is De Allende and Am - although they've played together before, Am has only recently returned from injury.
As for the back row - cannot understand the logic - this is much lighter combo than the one against the WBs

F
Forward pass 482 days ago

Sadly this is media these days. The ABs played well and won comfortably. Ill enjoy that and not try to turn it into some sort of degredation of the teams. If they lose this weekend it isnt going to change anything whatsoever for the WC. Same if they win this weekend.

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

F
Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Freddie Thomas: 'OMFG, I've been selected for Wales - my mum was bawling her eyes out' Freddie Thomas: 'OMFG, I've been selected for Wales - my mum was bawling her eyes out'
Search