The admission by All Blacks assistant coach Scott McLeod that tempers flared as his side trained under the hot Bordeaux sun will be a welcome one for those supporters hoping for signs the players are working with the required intensity during their World Cup bye week.
Details of the incidents were scarce as the All Blacks trained behind closed doors at the Begles club, McLeod telling Kiwi reporters, “there were a couple of pushes and shoves going on which was good”.
Halfback Aaron Smith added: “Being able to compete at a game intensity is always nice. Having 30-odd players going hammer and tongs is quite fun. A fair bit of tempers and emotions got up but if you can build that resilience and hardness against your mates, it always stands you in good stead for another opposition.”
That opposition will be Italy, whom the All Blacks play in Lyon a week on Saturday NZT.
The Italians got their preparation in for a match the All Blacks will likely have to win in order to make the quarter-finals by overturning a 7-17 halftime deficit to beat Uruguay 38-17 in Nice.
If the All Blacks beat Italy and then Uruguay in their final pool game they will likely face either Ireland or South Africa in their quarter-final. The Irish and Boks meet in a highly anticipated Pool B match on Sunday morning NZT.
And although details of the All Black flare-ups overnight were scarce, one can surmise the protagonists were forwards due to the close-contact training required and presence of men such as Dane Coles, Brodie Retallick and newcomer Ethan Blackadder – a trio who generally practise with a physical edge that can provoke a response, shall we say.
“The boys were blowing towards the end,” said McLeod. “We felt as though we could get a fair bit of work into them, particularly in the areas around our skill-set and some discipline work.
“So we pushed them quite hard in that space. It was intense stuff – short transitions, physicality up and we're running them a little bit more as well.”
The high-intensity session is significant because the All Blacks’ pack have to make the biggest shifts after being overpowered by South Africa and France recently.
The Boks' loss at Twickenham was a strangely passive one – although they were hampered by cards for Sam Cane and Scott Barrett – and the French defeat carried echoes of that record humbling.
Already at this World Cup it is evident that the nation with the strongest scrum will have an automatic advantage, particularly during the knockout phases, and it’s here and at the breakdown where the All Blacks have to improve their accuracy and discipline that the biggest shifts must be made.
Echoes can be seen too of the last World Cup when the All Blacks had an extremely physical session on the day they were supposed to play Italy in their final pool match in Toyota, a game cancelled due to Typhoon Hagibis.
Instead, they trained with the intensity of a Test match and a week later produced an outstanding performance in thrashing Ireland 46-14 in the quarter-final in Tokyo.
This is the first World Cup in which bye weeks have been introduced - to counteract the short turnarounds between matches that severely disadvantaged some teams - read Tier 2 nations - over others.
Both the All Blacks, now down to No.4 in the world, and Ireland, now No.1, have changed significantly since that remarkable quarter-final win and one of the biggest concerns about the All Blacks’ recent performances will be the number of penalties they are conceding – 12 against both France in the opener, and Namibia, whom they thrashed 71-3 in Toulouse last weekend.
“We reviewed hard,” McLeod said. “What are some consistent things that we want to work on? We've done that today, but on Friday we're really going to push the boat out in terms of some pressure-on scenarios where we haven't executed as well as we could have.
“We found referees are rewarding the breakdown 60% to the defence. So that's a big shift [up on the Rugby Championship]. If you're winning the race to the ball and getting your hands on, they're rewarding the defence a little bit more.”
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