Beating Shag's All Blacks: How to give yourself the best chance (without bugging)

All Black losses this decade are rarer than a hen’s tooth.

The previous decade ended inauspiciously for (then) assistant coach Steve ‘Shag’ Hansen and the New Zealand national squad, who lost four of the first eight Tests of 2009, unable to handle South Africa’s aggressive lineout and the technical aspects of a kick-chase-turnover pressure game plan.

Shag faced the axe for his role in the lineout debacle. We’ve come a long way since then. The talk now is how long after Japan 2019 he should stay in charge.

From 2010 to now, the Kiwis have enjoyed one of rugby history’s all-time dynastic reigns. Six losses in six years and two world cup wins: every team in every sport would take that, right now.

All Black teams have never lost much, but this decade is shaping up as one of their stingiest. Only five nations have ever beaten them: Australia have played their neighbours the most and have logged the most victories (42), South Africa has been the All Blacks’ most dangerous opponent with 35 wins and the highest win percentage of any Kiwi foe at 42 per cent, France has the third-best rate of beating the All Blacks at 23 per cent or twelve wins, and England (7 wins) and Wales (3 wins) round out the lucky list.

Winning in New Zealand itself seems impossible at times. Even if you have the perfect start and play your very best, like Argentina did last weekend when they forced Shag to bench two of his best players, you can end up looking at 50-plus points by the home team.

As head coach, Shag has only lost three Tests (to England, South Africa, and Australia). I examined those Tests as well as eight other games in which Shag’s All Blacks were pushed to the edge (draws and wins in which the margin was four or less, with the result in doubt until the final whistle).

I did not look closely at the 2009 and 2010 seasons because Shag had not yet taken the helm, the cast of characters have turned over a bit much, and rugby’s all-important rucks and breakdowns were policed differently.

So, the matches I looked at were the big win in 2012 by England at Twickenham, the draws in Brisbane (2012) and Sydney (2014), the loss at Ellis Park after Liam Messam was adjudged to have fouled Schalk Burger (2014), the Michael Cheika win in Sydney (2015), and narrow 2014 escapes against England in Dunedin and London, against South Africa in Wellington in 2014 and again in the World Cup semifinal in 2015, and a one-point squeaker in Brisbane in October of 2014.

I decided to leave the 2012 Test out after closer examination. Hansen admitted that England “took the game to us,” but it was an outlier in every respect, when compared to the other ten “close” Tests of the Shag Era. I have concluded it was just one of those rare anomalies we see in life. Also, it is the oldest one in the sample and I don’t see it as having probative value.

Looking at the ten close Tests, I noticed immediately that in all of them, the All Blacks scored substantially fewer points than their average for the Shag Era or this decade as a whole. That is true whether we use an average against all opponents, or just the opponents that ran them close in the ten Tests, or just the opponents who actually beat them in this decade or in the Shag Era.

First point: It starts with defence. We can find very few examples in the last twenty or thirty years of a team going shot-for-shot, NBA-style, and taking a 46-40 victory over the All Blacks.

The Pumas tried that approach (which did happen in 2000, when Robbie Fleck scored tries at will through a porous Kiwi defence) and learnt the hard way that trading tries with New Zealand almost always ends up as it did in 2013 at Ellis Park: praise from neutrals, labels of ‘instant classic,’ and viral highlights, but no win, and not really much of a sweat for the rotund Shag and his ultra-fit team.

Second point: If you want a close game with the All Blacks and a chance to win at the hooter, you cannot let them score the fourth try. The average points scored by the All Blacks in the ten close Tests in the Shag Era was 21.3. All Black-beating teams (a tiny sample) averaged 27 or so points, but the better analytic is the 21.3.

Holding the All Blacks to less than four tries, and to about 21 points, is easier said than done, but putting the ball in play too much in the first half or three quarters almost guarantees they will score one or two quick tries in the final portions of either half, or even explode as they did against the Pumas and run away.

If the ball is in play for 40 per cent of the game, the aggregate score is usually something around sixty or seventy points, and guess who will have the majority?

Even if we look at Shag’s hardest year, 2014, and even if we delete the USA score as an outlier, the All Blacks averaged 27.2 points scored per game. That’s the key number: 27. Keep the All Blacks between 22 and 27, you might have a close game. Keep them under 22, you have a chance to draw or win.

Run with the bulls like you are in Pamplona? You will get gored.

To illustrate the point deeper, I will go outside my ten close Tests sample and look at all losses or “close” games from 2009 until 2016. That harvests 21 games. In those, New Zealand averaged 19.8 points and their more-successful-than-most opponents averaged 22.1.

Back to the ten close Tests of the Shag Era (minus the Twickenham Miracle of 2012):

1. The bore in Brisbane: Shag called this 18-18 draw the “ugliest game I’ve seen.” Actually, New Zealand kicked from hand eight more times than Australia, even though Mike Harris was at 15 for the Wallabies. Kurtley Beale was at flyhalf, Scott Higginbotham and Liam Gill made rare appearances, and ‘Higgers’ raised Shag’s ire for a ‘cheap shot’ on Richie McCaw. The Wallabies played in the Kiwi half (59 per cent of territory) and the All Blacks only won three lineouts. Nobody scored a try.

Third point: One way to make sure the All Blacks don’t score four tries is to make sure they score no tries.

Fourth point: The third point is sometimes easier to accomplish if you don’t try to score four tries.

Fifth point: When Shag thinks a game was not pretty, you have probably played a good game against the All Blacks.

2. The Cruden c-c-c-conversion: Aaron Cruden has had trouble with alarm clocks, but this time, he won extra-extra time to convert a Ryan Crotty try twice and win a 24-22 white-knuckler. Ireland went up 19-0 after 17 minutes using a hard and low front row, but Sexton missed the kick that might have made Cruden’s even harder, and the Dublin hosts tried to hang on for 63 minutes. Shag confessed: “They rattled us. We clawed across.”

Sixth point: If you going to take the All Blacks into deep water, you must kick well and you must kick often and you will probably need to kick for poles very well.

Seventh point: They will come back; even a nineteen point lead isn’t safe. Don’t substitute your front row unless you have to if they are dominating the Kiwi props.

3. Pollard and Lambie’s one-two punch at Ellis Park in 2014. The Springboks fielded a strong spine (Bismarck du Plessis, Eben Etzebeth, Duane Vermeulen, Handre Pollard, Jean de Villiers, and an in-form Willie le Roux) but it took two flyhalves who both had to outplay Beauden Barrett by taking the ball to the line, kicking precisely, scoring three tries but not letting the All Blacks get the fourth, and nailing a long penalty goal after a controversial penalty.

Shag put it like this: “We had bad luck, but we were beaten by a team who played better by a little bit today.” Both teams kicked the same number of times, but Pollard kicked better than Barrett.

Eighth point: Your rugby spine (2-4-8-10-12-15) must be healthy to beat the All Blacks, but you will still need luck and you might need two playmakers.

4. Ben Smith and goal-line defence save the day: Also in 2014, the All Blacks spent the last five or six minutes in Wellington protecting a four-point lead against a suffocating Springboks team camped out in the New Zealand red zone, often only two or three metres from the try line. New Zealand kicked from hand 33 times and they needed every one of them.

After this narrow escape, in which each team scored just one try, Shag observed it was a “tough, tough Test; wasn’t the prettiest.” Again, this is a good sign if you are the opponent. He also promised the Kiwis would “work on communication between forwards and backs.” Ben Smith made so many Boks miss him, he made his own team dizzy.

Ninth point: To give the All Blacks problems, split their forwards from their backs and play the kind of rugby that does not allow easy chatter across their lines. But you have to find Ben Smith and tackle him two times each time.

5. The Fekitoa-Slade buzzer-beater: In October of 2014, the All Blacks scored seven points at the death to pip the Wallabies 29-28, after the Brisbane hosts led 15-12 at oranges. Australia played in the New Zealand half a staggering 61 per cent of the time, turned the Kiwis over 19 times, but kicked less than ten times.

Tenth Point: Aussies and Saffas will win the territorial game differently, but that is one of the best ways to give a Shag team problems. Still, you can still lose if you let New Zealand get their 27-plus points.

6. The rain in Sydney is a good defence: Shag did not like the 12-12 draw in August of 2014 with Australia. No tries were scored. The All Blacks missed 21 tackles and had only 33 per cent of the territory. “Defending, defending, defending,” was Shag’s take.

11th Point: Make the All Blacks tacklers, but do it in their half, and don’t think you have to make a pretty spectacle.

7. Ben Smith is a champion: England lost 27-28 in Dunedin – there’s that 27 number again. Six tries were scored and England missed 31 tackles, which means it was the kind of game Ben Smith likes. As Shag said: “He’s a champion.” But he also said: “Great Test match.” Which means it wasn’t that nerve-wracking in his mind. Too pretty.

8. TV producers can help: Shag didn’t quite go the full Cheika after Twickenham TV producers helped the home team too much in a 24-21 win in 2014. But he did say: “the TV producers annoy me.” Nevertheless, he also noted: “We won the game in the ten minutes Coles was in the sin bin.”

12th point: The All Blacks play well with fourteen men. Sometimes better because they have more space.

9. The semi-final we lost: I’ve chronicled in great detail (see losing in London) this narrow loss, but let me remind everyone: the All Blacks kicked 47 times in the 20-18 win that for all practical purposes ended Heyneke Meyer’s Bok coaching career, and might have put Shag in a bit of bother if it had gone the other way.

My Boks never looked like scoring in the last part of the game, but neither did the All Blacks. It was a drop goal and a neck roll and a lineout steal; those sort of things.

Shag pronounced Richie McCaw “the greatest player ever and the greatest skipper, and in situations like this, we needed him, because self-belief is massive.” McCaw said it was a “big step up from any game I’ve ever played against the Boks.”

13th point: You can get close, keep them under 21, but you have to do the core things right, and you might need a drop goal, too, because they will always have a great player, a great skipper, and self-belief.

10. Untidy All Blacks: In 2015, the Wallabies gave the All Blacks a bit of a hiding, but that is probably overstating it. It was a 27-19 win, which is so rare, it feels bigger than it is. The Wallabies won the territory battle (58 per cent), and Shag lamented that: “Playing at the wrong end of the field; couple of lapses. We need to tidy up.”

14th point: When Shag says they need to tidy up, they tidy up. You better do the same: value the ball, put it in the right places, don’t slip off tackles, and never get into a fast-break scoring fest with them.

The Boklings go to Christchurch with about 500 caps at their disposal; it could get ugly unless they revisit the ten close Tests of the Shag Era and zealously commit to these fourteen points.