The All Blacks are in Rugby Championship mode following last night’s announcement of the 36-player squad but the major focus is on the World Cup, the ultimate fixture on the rugby calendar described as “intimidating” and “scary” by assistant coach Joe Schmidt.
Given there are only five Tests before that first pool game against France in Paris on September 9 NZT – four Rugby Championship matches and one World Cup tune-up against the Springboks at Twickenham on August 27 - the coaches almost literally cannot wait to get started.
Seventeen players not involved in Saturday’s Super Rugby Pacific final between the Chiefs and Crusaders in Hamilton will gather for a three-day camp in Mount Maunganui from Wednesday, with the finalists joining the squad next Monday.
The first Test of the year is against Argentina in Mendoza on July 8, and, with some Northern Hemisphere nations already having held World Cup training camps, the pressure on the coaches to prepare their squad in such a short time-frame was almost palpable at last night’s squad announcement in Te Awamutu.
Head coach Ian Foster confirmed that players from the Chiefs and Crusaders would be named for the Mendoza Test, saying “every day is going to be vital for us”, adding that the expectation was that all the players would be going “100mph” once in the squad.
“If you’re going to come in fatigued then you’re going to be left behind,” Foster said.
The major talking points of the squad are the inclusion of newcomers Cam Roigard, Samipeni Finau, Emoni Narawa, Tamaiti Williams and Dallas McLeod, along with the exclusion of Akira Ioane, Hoskins Sotutu and Brad Weber.
The blow for Sotutu will be doubly felt as he has not even been named in the All Blacks XV for the team’s two matches against Japan.
It’s clear that the selectors have wanted to reward form and while neither Blues loose forwards Ioane and Sotutu have been playing particularly well, Chiefs halfback Weber could probably count himself as being unlucky.
Still, Foster and company have shown a ruthless streak they will expect their players to show over the next five Tests and into a World Cup, they, for perhaps the first time ever, will not be favourites to win.
Foster, while acknowledging that the All Blacks hadn’t won a Rugby Championship in a World Cup year since 2011, said: “Last year we had a bit of adversity and we got tight. We’re actually craving as many big games as we can [get] at the moment.
“We want to go in fully loaded to this Rugby Championship. I think it’s important for us to get back up to speed really quickly, to get our game right.
“The work that Jase [Ryan] and Feeky [Greg Feek] are doing with our forwards, we need to re-establish that very quickly. On the other side of the game, the attacking and the defence, we want to set a level that we need to get to. The World Cup, day one is pretty big and we want to be ready.”
Asked whether he thought the All Blacks could win it, Foster replied: “Absolutely. The good thing is not many other people think we can.
“It’s probably an unusual space to be in as an All Blacks team but it doesn’t change our belief. But belief is only one thing, you’ve actually got to put it to work.”
In an interview with 1News, assistant coach Schmidt, who coached Ireland to the quarter-finals of the last World Cup in Japan where they were thrashed by the All Blacks, made no bones about the immensity of the challenge.
“It’s intimidating, it’s scary,” he said. “Honestly, it’s intimidating because I just think the World Cup has become such a microscope and I think there’s a big bright light behind that microscope.
“And if you don’t get it right you get burned so we just have to make sure that living under that microscope doesn’t overheat us, that we stay calm and deliver on the field and not get distracted.
“There’s probably a little bit more noise around the team and a few more distractions than there normally are when an All Black team is getting prepared to go to a World Cup. We’ve got to try to eliminate those as best we can.”
As what he learned about coaching Ireland in Japan four years ago, he said: “We went in 2019 with the Irish team ranked No.1 in the world for the first time in history. I think they were ninth when I first took over. It’s quite intimidating when that expectation starts to really heat up under the microscope.
“For us to be the best when you can be we’ve got to feel a sense of belief and a sense of freedom to play in the manner that we need to play. Otherwise, if we feel the pressure too much we restrict ourselves.”
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