A real test of depth

The All Blacks were expected to thrash England in the second test at Christchurch and they did, but it cost them the services of their skipper and their best lineout forward for a month or so.

Ali Williams twisted his ankle after ten minutes, and Richie McCaw hyper-extended his around the half hour mark. Considering the sub-standard nature of the opposition, it was too high a price to pay.

Before the test New Zealanders, myself included, had already been talking about the real test of our strength beginning when the Tri Nations started. Now, going into the world’s toughest test series without McCaw and Williams, the examination of our strength and depth will be that much more thorough. Springboks and Wallabies, however, should be wary of any extra confidence springing from the news. New Zealand’s depth has usually been sufficient to beat them like gongs whenever the referee has had both eyes open.

Just such signs were clear even as McCaw limped from the play. Dan Carter had already sent debutant centre Richard Kahui away for a try before Ali Williams went down. With a tidy blindside scissors move, he ran aggressively to the exchange point but kept the defence guessing by carrying the ball in two hands. From the scrum immediately following McCaw’s injury Carter strolled in himself untouched.

Kahui and the other new cap, left wing Rudi Wulf, both made dummy runs straight back towards halfback Andy Ellis, whose pass went straight down a channel between the two of them to where Carter was drifting right into acres of space.

It was a Wayne Smith special. He calls them strike moves, planned moves from set play, and this one was beautifully executed.

I asked Tana Umaga about this once, offering as an example the brilliant fifteen-man try that Christian Cullen finished at Westpac Stadium in 2000 against the Wallabies. Umaga smiled at the memory, but told me the ones they all took most joy in were the ones they still executed cleanly even though some last split-second adjustment had to be made. He mentioned a Sitiveni Sivivatu try against the Lions in 2005. Passes had gone behind players, and runners had needed to adjust their timings slightly.

Umaga then spoke of how Smithy made players feel like they owned the moves themselves, soliciting their input as the moves were rehearsed and then tweaking them according to those discussions. This is what gave the players an ability to adjust whenever something unexpected happened or conditions weren’t optimal. In the second half against England, there was a perfect illustration… and, fittingly enough, it was a variation on the 2000 Cullen try in Wellington, in my opinion the best try ever planned.

In 2000, Anton Oliver threw to the back of a four-man attacking lineout, on the right hand touch between the ten metre line and twenty-two. Norm Maxwell and Todd Blackadder sucked all the Aussie jumpers to the front, so that when Taine Randell hoisted Ron Cribb ten feet in the air down the back he was jumping unopposed, and could deliver the ball off the top to Justin Marshall. The ball flew to Andrew Mehrtens, wide and deep. It was passed to Pita Alatini, who quick-handed to Alama Ieremia. Ieremia was running with Josh Kronfeld and the two props into a midfield set-up, while Mehrts was looping behind. The Aussies were all braced on the balls of their feet, looking wide-eyed at Jonah Lomu coming from way back with a head of steam up. When the ball was flipped to Mehrts before the dummy set-up even made contact, he worked the scissors with Jonah and no-one saw Umaga coming. Lomu back-handed to Umaga and he scythed through two players, who really only had time to stick their arms out and almost pat him on the back as he flew past. Christian Cullen was also at full gallop outside him, and Natty drew the fullback to give him an unopposed run in under the posts.

In 2008, with exactly the same field position, a similar short lineout had Anthony Boric being lifted down the back. He’d replaced Ali Williams and, without wanting to labour the point, looked born to the purple, but here he didn’t quite take cleanly. Greg Somerville however was alert at the back and tidied up. His immediate pass wide was the necessary adjustment allowing the beat to be kept, as Rodney So’oialo and the spare fatties went into their midfield set-up.

Instead of the first five and left wing scissoring, with the centre getting a back-hander, Ellis skipped to Carter with Kahui cutting back as dummy runner again and Carter popped it up for Sivivatu. In other words, it was a way of effecting the same left side line-break without having Jonah Lomu as the world’s best decoy. Sivivatu shrugged off the fullback and unloaded for Ma’a Nonu in Mike Tindall’s ineffectual tackle, so Nonu had no-one left in front of him… Wulf and Leon MacDonald were surplus to requirements once Siti had committed the extra tackler.

So this was another for Wayne’s highlight reel. It only took thirteen of the fifteen men to execute, but it may have a certain added eminence in Smithy’s mind because of the adjustment and brinksmanship required.

And my apologies are extended to any Australian subscribers… where England in 2008 and the Wallabies of 2000 are concerned, such All Black strike moves breaching them are the ONLY things that countenance me mentioning the two backlines in the same breath. In 2000 surplus attackers against the Wallabies were a rare luxury, while these days England’s midfield might turn a profit even greater than their inflated salaries if they charged a toll for every tackle waved past.

Once Tindall realised his inadequacy was becoming too obvious, he flopped on a ruck in the red zone and took a ten minute breather. The All Blacks opted for a scrum instead of a penalty shot, and Sione Lauaki scored coming off the back… resembling nothing more than a black snowplough parting the white English drifts.

England’s attack briefly came alive in Tindall’s absence, there being one less impediment between their forward pack and their three-quarters. Halfback Danny Care had already scooted over from a quick tap, and now fourteen Englishmen playing for little other than pride came up with a fine try against fifteen All Blacks.

The wings still had to inject themselves to find work, and when Topsy Ojo saw his forwards battering away without reward in a long recycling series of phases he took matters into his own hands to get the ball over the advantage line. Bouncing off defenders to within five yards of the New Zealand goalposts, he finally put the All Black defence on its heels. The ball went right, fullback Mathew Tait sent a pinpoint floating pass wide to where Tom Varndell was waiting, and the wing finished cleanly.

Jimmy Cowan replaced Ellis late and took revenge against his opposite number by scoring a try from a quick tap himself, right on the full-time siren, to post 44-12.

The question of who should replace McCaw and Williams for the first Tri Nations test against the Spingboks in Wellington now looms as our main worry.

Replacing Williams presents less problems. Taranaki’s Jason Eaton would normally seem the likeliest candidate, but the selectors appear to have such different key criteria these days so it’s best not to assume they won’t let him continue to get game time with the NZ Maori in a starting role.

Waikato’s Kevin O’Neill and Otago’s Tom Donnelly were two members of a wider training group they convened in late May, if the selectors chose not to disrupt the Maori program. The Maori have two more games in the Pacific Nations Cup, playing Japan in Napier on Saturday and then a winner-take-all match in Sydney against Australia A. Eaton would be a big loss for them.

Covering McCaw’s absence is a different matter entirely, the fact that he’s already irreplaceable notwithstanding. Auckland’s Daniel Braid, once again, is injured. The selectors specifically asked for a tape of the NZ Maori v Manu Samoa game, to study the form of Bay of Plenty’s Tanerau Latimer, because ideally they would like to find a specialist rather than further reshuffle a loose forward mix already full of utilities.

If they choose to switch So’oialo or Adam Thomson to the openside instead, reasoning that George Smith and the Wallabies are still five weeks away and they can get away with a makeshift fetching breakaway for the first two tests against the beefy Springboks, they might still elevate Canterbury’s Kieran Read or Mose Tuiali’i, maybe even Waikato’s Liam Messam.

Those are their options as I see them, but that’s as far as I’m prepared to go. No one seems to be able to accurately read the selectors’ minds right now.

The best news of the week for New Zealand was a staggering clean sweep by the Under 20s side at the IRB Junior World Championship in Wales… played 5, won 5, points for 242, points against 28.

In coming seasons watch for the names Ben Afeaki and Rodney Ah You (props), Chris Smith and Sam Whitelock (locks), Peter Saili, Nasi Manu and Luke Braid (loosies), Daniel Kirkpatrick and Ryan Crotty (five-eighths), Jackson Willison, Zac Guildford and Kade Poki (three-quarters), Trent Renata and Andre Taylor (fullbacks).

Apart from high work rates and breathtaking skill levels, all have the sort of attitudes that suggest they will handle lives as professional players well… maybe even better than this first generation of professionals, many who seemed to jump at every dollar waved in their faces.

There is also a curious dynamic evolving inside New Zealand’s rugby circles, and certainly becoming more prevalent since the special considerations given McCaw and Carter in their NZRU contracts were made public.

It’s a general acceptance that professional players need to weigh up their prospects carefully. Some will jump at the first offer they get, too impatient to wait in line paying dues, and some will regard a test career of any length as a pinnacle then immediately farm themselves out to European or Japanese clubs rather than understudy a true great. Others will aspire to be truly great All Blacks, holding the whip hand when it comes to current or future negotiations.

It’s all self-regulating. Go or stay, decide for yourself what’s right for you… and that in turn will (usually) tell us what we need to know about you.

A certain percentage will play out their latter days on fat Heineken Cup paypackets… what Rod Tidwell called “doing right by me and mine”, or “the Kwan”… and that will give as many opportunities to New Zealand youngsters in local competitions as it will block opportunities for European youngsters in theirs.

England Under 20, who New Zealand thrashed in the final, were on a nine game streak and had gone unbeaten through the Junior Six Nations competition, but only a handful had played in the Zurich Premiership and none had played in the Heineken Cup.

When they came up against New Zealand, with many players experienced at provincial level including three Super 14 players, they fell apart. With their national senior side doing likewise on their current tour, we can see clear evidence of what happens when the path of such youngsters is blocked by foreign professionals and old local warhorses.

In the last two years, an exodus of New Zealand’s elite players began to impact our current strength at top level. Carl Hayman, Chris Jack and Aaron Mauger would almost certainly have remained in the top selection bracket, and their unavailability forced an early elevation for others. The NZRU moved reasonably quickly to nip this trend in the bud by offering McCaw and Carter special deals, and in doing so demonstrated to the youngest professionals that there was now an extra tier in the pyramid to which they might aspire.

My regret over the premature departure of Hayman, Jack and Mauger aside… if European nations want to continue their grim slide at the expense of SANZAR nations, they need only continue their policy of luring away our jaded and impatient.

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