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Where was the drop kick?: Five key takeaways from All Blacks' draw with Wallabies

(Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

Cameron McMillan looks at five takeaways from the All Blacks‘ 16-16 draw with the Wallabies in Wellington.

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Drop goals continue to be ignored

With the scores locked up and time expired, amazingly both teams had it there for the taking. Australia shaped up for a drop goal but didn’t take it before the All Blacks went down the other end and did the same thing.

Richie Mo’unga briefly stood in the pocket with the posts right in front of him but he didn’t receive the ball. Instead the test ended with the ball being spread out wide and knocked on metres short of the line. Sound familiar?

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Ian Foster and Sam Cane speak to media after the opening Bledisloe Cup clash of 2020

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Ian Foster and Sam Cane speak to media after the opening Bledisloe Cup clash of 2020

You only have to go back to 2018 when the All Blacks lost to the Springboks also in Wellington. Gregor Paul wrote a column at the time headlined ‘All Blacks need to change mindset when it comes to drop goals’ and the side appeared to when Beauden Barrett kicked two in consecutive tests against England and Ireland later that year.

If the All Blacks aren’t going to kick a drop goal five metres out right in front of the posts with scores tied and time expired, then I’m not sure when they ever will again.

Let’s stop with the one-hand groundings

The first try of 2020 started with George Bridge passing on his outside to Rieko Ioane on the left-hand wing and it appeared having three world-class wings on the field was a masterstroke by Ian Foster, although replays showed Ioane was lucky to get away with putting a foot in touch in the lead-up to Jordie Barrett’s five-pointer.

Ioane then produced a clanger with his botched grounding on halftime. Instead of the All Blacks going up possibly 15-3 at the break it remained 8-3 because of the pointless display of showmanship.

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He’s still got a decent strike rate after pulling it off 25 out of 26 times but it’s probably time to put away the one-hander grounding and switch to the classic breadbasket dive.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMH7VYgZv2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

88 minute games are better than 80

The test did have its moments but the final eight minutes from Reece Hodge hitting the post to Jordie Barrett’s final knock-on, was real heart in your mouth stuff. It was pseudo golden point and seemed never-ending.

Here’s a brief breakdown post the post being hit:

– The All Blacks recovered from defending on their own line after an Ardie Savea turnover (which arguably saved them from defeat).

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– The All Blacks botched an attacking lineout (a rare set-piece mistake in a crucial spot).

– The Wallabies got to halfway before knocking on.

– The All Black surged to five metres short of the tryline before Karl Tu’inukuafe knocked on.

– The Wallabies lost it again after a short advantage.

– The All Blacks managed to knock it on one more time to end the test.

I can’t think of a more compelling stretch to finish a test match, let alone any game of rugby where both teams had a chance to win it after the 80-minute mark.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CGMj6XsA3V-/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Sam Cane is going to lead by example

The new All Blacks skipper made 25 tackles, nine more than anyone else in the test. An impressive workload for the All Black number seven who didn’t miss any tackle attempts. He also beat more defenders (one) than second-five Jack Goodhue who had a very quiet test with four metres gained from his four carries. Aaron Smith’s performance was also noteworthy. He was outstanding during Super Rugby Aotearoa so it should be no surprise that in his ninth All Blacks’ season that the halfback remains one of the best on the field.

Day time rugby is the best

Apologies to Northern Hemisphere fans who had to get up in the early hours on a Sunday but 4pm Sunday is a great time for test rugby. A shame the test wasn’t a sell-out but maybe we could put that down to lingering Covid fears in the capital. It was also great to have the Wellington gale playing its part once again.

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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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