Analysis: The meltdown against the Boks means Scott Robertson has overseen six defeats. His team have led all but one at halftime, writes Patrick McKendry.
As the All Blacks prepare to play a rejuvenated Wallabies in a Test which will once again put both teams’ records at Eden Park under the spotlight, focus within the home camp will go on the psychological aspects of their collapse in Wellington.
Head coach Scott Robertson denied in the immediate aftermath of the record-breaking 43-10 defeat to the Springboks at Sky Stadium that the team’s preparation was to blame but it is possible that a replay of some key moments will change his mind.
The way so many of his players, including the experienced Beauden Barrett and Ardie Savea, went about chasing a game which was still within reach at the start of the fourth quarter should raise concerns and appeared symptomatic of a wider issue with this team.
The All Blacks achieved success when attacking the outside channels in the first half – the try on debut for left wing Leroy Carter was the most obvious, but there were other small wins too – which made Barrett’s actions after the break to twice go for low-percentage chips over the defence despite his side having numbers to spare on the outside all the harder to fathom.
This was despite the All Blacks still being in the game at that point (17-10 down and 24-10 down).
Vice-captain Savea tried something similar – only to give the ball back to the Boks as well - in a continuation of a second-half malaise which has become all too common.
The meltdown was the sixth loss in 21 Tests under Robertson and a thread running throughout all six defeats is his team’s inability to match their opponents in the second half.
In five out of the six, including last weekend, the All Blacks were leading at halftime.
The only anomaly was the defeat to Argentina in Buenos Aires last month when the All Blacks, up 13-6 after 26 minutes, conceded a try before halftime for a 13-13 scoreline at the break.
The most recent defeat prompted shocked former All Blacks Mils Muliaina and Kieran Read, both of whom were on the commentary team, to wonder whether the team “gave up” and the whereabouts of its “spine”.
Another former All Black told 1News that the players looked mentally “cluttered”, appeared to be a “team of individuals” and lacked the hardness traditionally associated with the side.
Inexperience will have played a part – New Zealand had eight players with fewer than 10 caps in the match-day squad while the much-changed Boks contained two.
But Robertson and his selectors must also own that, and, while they were limited in their options for reserve hooker (Brodie McAlister, playing in his second Test) in the wake of Codie Taylor’s head injury, plus back-up halfback Finlay Christie (on early as a replacement for Noah Hotham), picking Ruben Love there for his third cap always carried an element of risk.
The failure of the bench to offer a significant impact has been a common denominator in all six defeats under Robertson but the way in which key players Beauden Barrett (140 Tests) and vice-captain Savea (101) so clearly deviated from the game plan under pressure will again raise questions about the team’s ability to cope with it.
It was perhaps ironic that former skipper Richie McCaw was brought into the camp before this Test because if anyone demonstrated the mental and physical strength required for this level it was him.
But, crucially, he did not achieve those mental skills by himself.
In the movie “Chasing Great”, which focuses on his journey to the 2011 World Cup victory after the low of Cardiff four years earlier, McCaw gives enormous credit to forensic psychologist Ceri Evans.
In McCaw’s book Open Side, he makes the same points. In a passage that may resonate with Robertson now as he considers the Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup Test against Australia in Auckland a week on Saturday, McCaw writes:
“Acute stress comes when the brain perceives a threat, either predicted (opposition or individuals do something you’ve planned for) or unpredicted (they do something you haven’t planned for). Either is okay, as long as it’s not accompanied by a feeling of helplessness. That’s when adrenaline-fuelled responses overwhelm the individual, and you get aggressive, or you try to escape, or you go passive – so it’s fight, flight or freeze.
“If you go into freeze mode, your reactions are dulled, you go through the motions, lack coordination, become indecisive and withdrawn, you don’t hear people around you, you don’t see what’s in front of you any more.
“Ceri calls that state, when you lose contact with the present, getting trapped in the Red Zone.
“To get out of the Red Zone and move to what he calls the Blue Zone, you need to somehow retain situational awareness so you can make decisions and be able to execute on those decisions.”
McCaw goes on to detail how Evans provided tools with which to transition back to a state which promoted clear thinking.
What makes the failures over the last season and a half more puzzling is that Evans is now on staff with the All Blacks and has been throughout Robertson’s tenure.
All Blacks’ defeats under Robertson
2024
Argentina in Wellington 30-38 (led 20-15 at halftime)
South Africa in Johannesburg 27-31 (led 12-11)
South Africa in Cape Town 12-18 (led 9-3)
France in Paris 29-30 (led 17-10)
2025
Argentina in Buenos Aires 23-29 (13-13)
South Africa in Wellington 10-43 (led 10-7)
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