LONG READ 'Are Razor’s All Blacks heading for an early exit in the Rugby Championship?'

The moment of truth has arrived surprisingly early for Scott ‘Razor’ Robertson. He was a perennial coaching winner with the Crusaders in Super Rugby but he is already staring down the barrel in the 2024 Rugby Championship with the All Blacks.

With a two-Test visit to the Republic against the mighty world champion Springboks looming in rounds three and four, the new head coach simply cannot afford any slip-ups against the Pumas at Eden Park this Saturday. A 1-3 start or, God forbid, zero from four might mean the end of his reign before it has ever begun.

What is true in the macrocosm usually has an equivalent in the micro-detail further down the scale, and the most obviously worrying feature of the first match of the double-header against the Pumas was the home side’s inability to restart: to get out of its own half efficiently, especially from kick-off receipts.

A creative and efficient exit strategy from positions inside your own 22 is one of the hallmarks of a top-shelf team. Picture the scene: you have just scored some points and you trot back over halfway to receive the ensuing kick-off. You are feeling pretty good about life. There is an inevitable moment of mental relaxation, which can all too easily turn into mental laxity.

Maintaining concentration, and regaining momentum from that restart point is one litmus-test of the blue-chip elite. Leinster [2016-2023] used to plough hours of work into potential variations from kick-off receipt, looking to keep all options open for as long as possible – kick short or long, off left foot or right, the runback with ball in hand. It was no coincidence that our closest URC rivals, Dave Rennie’s Glasgow, also possessed the most flexible and confident exit strategy, frequently running past five or six phases in their own 22 in their endeavour to pick the right play and move the ball upfield.

Sir John Kirwan explained the issue for Razor’s All Blacks on The Breakdown:

“The exit strategy is, how do you get out of pressure? How do you get out of your own half?

“Our exit strategy at the moment, is to play [for] competitive kicks landing in our own half and try and compete for them. For the whole series [including the July Tests versus England and Fiji] so far, that’s not working.

“So, if you’re not competitive [in the air], then you don’t get out of your half. And they are still in your half.

“That would be the first thing that I think we look at. We look at our exit strategy and say, ‘does this suit our game?’

“And if you’re going to have an exit strategy with competitive high balls, do you then look at selection: ‘who are our best high-ball catchers?’

“I don’t like the [current] exit strategies.

“We are actually not trying to carve out and get them into their own half.”

As the head coach himself added after the game, “After every kick-off we put pressure on ourselves. We have got to be better at kick plans, at exits, in lots of areas. It starts there.”

The All Blacks did not enjoy one completely successful outcome in eight attempts during the Test at the Sky Stadium in Wellington. The pattern was set from the opening kick-off.

The Pumas set out their stall to kick right, into the seam between number five Sam Darry and his lifter, number one Ethan de Groot, and left wing Mark Telea standing just behind them. They found no reason to deviate from that policy throughout the rest of the 80 minutes.

Kicking into the seam often creates confusion between the forward pod ahead and the wing behind, and it demands decisive action in that area. The movements of number 12 Jordie Barrett are also interesting. Barrett starts in the short-middle zone on the 22 and then works his way around to the blindside of the first ruck. That deprives New Zealand of its biggest boot and a natural second receiver in midfield.

It commits the All Blacks to exiting high and short off either nine TJ Perenara, or Damian McKenzie standing directly behind him near the goal line.

On this occasion the All Blacks picked the first option. In the 54th minute, they opted for a different strategy.

When they exited off Perenara, they gave Argentina a nice kick return opportunity starting on the Kiwi side of halfway; when they went back to McKenzie the kick barely made the 22, granting the Pumas an even more attractive attacking lineout position. The biggest boot in New Zealand has again worked his way over to the blindside and provides neither a kicking nor a passing option on the exit.

One of the issues for a scrum-half exiting via the box kick in the modern game is that referees are beginning to apply the five-second rule from the call ‘use it!’ far more zealously. There is no time to build a three-layer ‘caterpillar ruck’ to keep the half-back out of harm’s way, which means they need to head for cover behind the blocker nearest the ruck instead.

The half-back will get no protection from the depth of the ruck, so Perenara takes a couple of steps laterally to hide behind Tupou Vaa’i. It gives Argentine number eight Juan Martin Gonzalez ample momentum on to the ball and there is nothing the All Black lock can do legally to stop him. It was the first of two block-downs Perenara suffered in the space of only two minutes.

Razor and his support staff must solve the dilemma of how to create more communication and accountability in the gap between Darry and Telea. Despite showing up well in other aspects of play on debut, Darry never offered to take responsibility for changing the depth of his positioning, to help out the wing behind him. The Aucklander was consistently blown backwards by the Argentine chase and eventually it cost the All Blacks a penalty goal and a cheap three points.

The big Blues lock has only to drop a couple of steps towards his own 22 to able to take the pressure off his team-mate once he knows the target area, but it is case of the same action – or rather lack of action – producing the same result. Ironically, the one kick-off of the game Darry did collect finished in a try for the Pumas when McKenzie attempted to vary the play by kicking to the opposite side of the field.

The second aspect is finding a more positive use for the biggest boot in New Zealand rather than hiding him on the blind side of the first ruck. The current policy means there is no possibility of a runback with ball in hand, and no chance of Barrett launching a huge punt down the middle of the paddock which asks more searching questions of the Argentine backfield.

In the first freeze-frame, there is no way of shifting the ball from left to right by hand, and no possibility of forcing the Pumas backfield deeper with a centre-field kick, because Barrett is twiddling his thumbs on the short side. In the second instance he has just worked far enough in from touch to add himself to the cleanout, but would not most of the New Zealand rugby fraternity prefer to see him as a kicking or passing option in midfield? At least that would make the opposition think twice.

The shorter exit kicking game utilised by the All Blacks set up Argentina for the bulk of their best moments on attack. Wind the game clock back to the very start of proceedings, and it was the visitors who benefited more from the home side’s kicking philosophy.

When you see that difference in width between attack and defence on the first phase of a kick return, it is only a matter of time before the moment to exploit the space arrives.

There is a real danger the Robertson era may be stymied before it ever gathers a head of steam. While it is only right to expect the All Blacks to bounce back from defeat in Wellington at the happiest of their hunting grounds in Auckland, the prospect of a two-Test series in South Africa remains daunting. Lose both of those games, and Razor will be feeling the pressure. Start with zero wins out of four and he will be probably gone by year’s end.

The teething problems are many and varied. New Zealand still has concerns about the best balance in its back-five forwards, while the multi-phase attack structure lacks sophistication. Even the bench front-row – such a positive in the England series – struggled against the Pumas at scrum time. The exit strategy should be rejected with the stamp ‘failure to launch’ – but that is no more or less where Razor’s new All Blacks are right now: at the top of the slipway, waiting for the signal to put to sea. The most decorated provincial coach in the shaky isles needs to restart as he means to go on.