Its impossible to assign a single rating to this year’s All Blacks as there were so many significant changes across the course of 2022.

Coaches, game plans, key personnel changes, and the fielding of weakened sides to give some marginal selections just one more chance, when what this side was screaming out for was consistent selection of it best 23 for a few weeks in a row.

Perhaps the best description of the year was something I heard on the Scrum V Welsh rugby website when it was all going pear-shaped for Wayne Pivac et al.

“It’s hard to pick a good side when you pick a poor squad.”

Perfect description of Ian Foster’s All Blacks at the start of the season. Along with Brad Mooar, John Plumtree and Grant Fox, this year’s All Blacks opened by ignoring everything that went poorly in 2021.

And while the opening walloping of Ireland in Test 1 looked like they be onto something, the next three matches, all comfortable losses, starkly demonstrated that the game plan, key players in the spine and the overall squad make-up were simply not up to the way the modern game was being played.

Start of the season report card – D (only the 42 points stuck on Ireland stop this being an outright F)
Ian and his friends appear to be teaching a curriculum not appropriate for modern classroom and reform is required.

There was some real Dunning-Krueger stuff going on and after much wailing Mooar and Plumtree were finally jettisoned at the third attempt, while ‘independent’ selector Grant Fox finished up after the Ireland series; in came Jason Ryan and then Joe Schmidt and the winning 23 in Johannesburg had a whopping 17 changes in personnel and positions from the loss to Ireland in the second test back in July.

Let’s not regurgitate the mess made by NZR of the entire changing of coaches process, way too public, not really fair on either Foster or the still sidelined Scott Robertson, but we ended up with the needed key changes in the coaching box which flowed into massive changes in the core game plan, so a result was achieved despite the noise.

Gregor Paul wrote the definitive articles on this period which I recommend all finding and reading, but it is worth noting Schmidt was the eventual kingmaker, and the players sent out for the win on the high veldt kept the Head Coaches neck out of the figurative noose.

Including that much needed turn around in the Republic, New Zealand then went 7-1-1 for the remainder of the season with games that still could have gone either way but buried in the performances was some genuine progression.

Let’s start with the magic man Jason Ryan.

He transformed a unit from one that struggled to get parity up front and had been dissected by both the French and the Irish, into a pack which did not get beaten at either gain-line or set piece for the remainder of the season.

The scrum, defensive and offensive maul, and the work at ruck time, offensively most notably, and the lineout where the loose forwards were genuine options was a step change, almost unrecognisable from the prior iteration.

I found this clip of Ryan scrum coaching with the Crusaders on Twitter, note not only the attention to detail, and the taking of the input from the players, but the total comfort with the message he is imparting and the respect with which those messages are received.

This is an excellent peek behind the curtain.

Learn the secret behind the @crusadersrugby scrum with forwards coach Jase Ryan ????#ScrumTime #GoldStandard #On pic.twitter.com/UR1HwUISpQ

— Crusaders (@crusadersrugby) August 6, 2020

As far as the forward pack goes, they must now be there or there abouts with the starting eight and bench now, and so few observations from me.

My starting front row before the Irish series started was Ethan de Groot, Samisoni Taukei’aho and Owen Franks.

Admittedly I didn’t see the Tyrel Lomax transformation train coming, but who did? However, the need to change out a whole bunch of underperforming tightheads was leaping off the park, thus naming Franks, and it took a few more Tests to shelve those underperforming.

We ended up with a seriously good set piece and round the park trio and come the big dance I would still be starting Taukei’aho, not only for his ball carrying but for his scrum work and lineout throwing over a year end improving Codie Taylor (who still managed three lineout errors versus England). Add in young Fletcher Newell and the returning Joe Moody and 2023 looks good.

Locks. The All Blacks need to make this call right now.

Scott Barrett is a lock, a damn fine one and one in form, and if he deserves to start over our two historical selections of choice then so be it. He was in such form this year that you can understand the shoehorning into blindside to make sure he was on the park, but at RWC time – he’s a lock.

I get the emotion of starting Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick together at Twickenham, they now hold the record of 64 Tests for locks selected together, Big Brodie was bringing up his 100, but having both those guys on the park in the last ten minutes was a disaster when fresher legs were required.

We need one more Test match level lock to get their hand up in 2023, I guess Tupou Vaa’i is the leading candidate, plus one other for some depth, Josh Dickson at the Highlanders looks the best bet for now.

Loose Forwards.

Blindside in particular, this position and flyhalf have transformed how New Zealand play the game post the coaching changes.

I wouldn’t mind a dollar for the number f times I typed in the last 18 months – “you cannot select two of Ardie Savea, Akira Ioane and Hoskins Sotutu in the same side, lest seriously bad things happen”.

But that was how the opening squad was selected with both the Blues selected along with Pita Gus Sowakula.

It wasn’t until Shannon Frizell turned in perhaps the blindside performance of the year during the win in Johannesburg that the looser trio theory was finally binned for good.

As we look towards next year at least five players here should be lock ins. Frizell and the returning Ethan Blackadder at 6, Dalton Papali’i and Sam Cane at openside, and expect Savea to be backed up at 8 with the best two more physical practitioners, for mine that would be a choice between Luke Jacobson, Cullen Grace and Marino Mikaele-Tu’u.

Here some good examples of what we need to see in an All Black six, simple, low error and doing the right thing in all the tough places up against the opposition big men in the middle of the park.

Close to the ball:

A rare bonus when you have a blindside with the speed to do this, plus watch the clean out on Justin Tipuric.

Tackles

What is of note here is who the tackles are on.

Carries

Watch the presentation of the ball in particular as well as the willingness to do the hard yard carry.

Whoever gets selected in that open-side shirt for New Zealand is going to find their job a whole lot easier with either Frizell or Blackadder on the other side of the scrum. It was no coincidence that Cane played his best game of the season in tandem with Frizell.

The introduction of Schmidt as the attack coach made quite the change to the All Black offense but perhaps not in the way expected.

There was the expected change towards ball retention, fewer in-game passes, and a more direct approach, but if other team’s coaches were intimating that they were hiding plans and structures away, Schmidt seemed to be in full on experimental mode, all out in the open, as he looked for the optimal solution.

We saw Richie Mo’unga moving the ball by hand against South Africa, the forwards narrowed up the attack against Wales, England were tested by the short wipers kicks from all corners combined with a narrow running game out of 10, while Australians Pete Samu and Bernard Foley are not going to forget the afternoon the New Zealanders sent Jordie Barrett after them in the narrow channels.

It was encouraging to see such variation managed well and quite seamlessly over so few games and the coaching team will really have some choices available to them for the start of the 2023 campaign. This in itself was quite the achievement.

What was pleasing was the ditching of the flat attack. Any doubts that this is not the way to go were confirmed by the run out against Scotland where that plan raised its head in parts and poor old David Havili was back to being a one-off battering ram.

For years we have heard the All Blacks could not handle the rush defence, but their own flat game plan has been complicit in this outcome, and post changes, it is difficult to point to a game in the latter season when a rush upset the preferred XV.

If there is an issue in the halves now it is the gap between starters Aaron Smith and Richie Mo’unga and their back-ups.

Brad Weber looks the favourite for that second halfback slot for the RWC, but the third position is wide open.
As is the race for the back-up 10. Its clear Beauden Barrett simply does not have the breadth of skill set, length of kicking game, nor decision making framework to run any of the new attack models.

The issue is there is no ready-made candidates ready to step out from last years Super Rugby sides. Stephen Perofeta certainly has the skill set to do the job and his nomination for Super Rugby player of the year reflects just how much of the Blues attack ran off him but is he ready for the next step?

I think both Perofeta and Damian McKenzie will need to be running the cutter for their Super sides every week next year and may the best man win a place in the RWC squad. There really are no other options given the number of tests available before France.

The wide channels and fullback will be represented by quality as Mark Telea and Shaun Stevenson stuck their hand up towards the end of the year giving greater options to the coaches with Will Jordan, Beauden Barrett, Sevu Reece, Caleb Clarke, Leicester Fainga’anuku, all still really solid choices. That, like the loose forwards will be all about finding the best combinations, and not the ‘best’ three players.

The big question remains at centre. For mine, I want an organiser, the guy who does not make errors either side of the ball, who stays connected to those around him and brings that all round game. Try as he might, and he did perform well, Rieko Ioane will always be a world class winger but an average international centre, so his move back to the left-wing place of Caleb Clarke and Anton Leinert-Brown being given the 13 shirt just makes the whole place look a lot tidier, improves the defence in both positions and provides fewer places for the opposition to attack.

The role of captain remains up in the air and anyone who thinks it’s a slam dunk move away from Sam Cane should check out the last 10 minutes versus England with both Sam Whitelock and Ardie Savea on the park; the inability to put the foot on the opposition throat, no matter who is wearing the armband would not go away.

And finally, if anyone has suggestions as to how to get this side to concentrate for the full 80 minutes then please forward them in. It is a recurring issue, one which is beyond my pay grade to assess, but one which could the fatal flaw when the pointy end of the RWC games come think and fast next year.

The on the park improvement post the South Africa loss gets a solid B for mine, especially given the dark place they had to come from and let’s not underestimate just how much of a rebuild this was within a single season.

For all the noise and gnashing of teeth from we the New Zealand rugby public in the early part of this season, I would suggest that this side now has some very serious blocks to build off when they begin the 2023 campaign and that, with some courage of selection, will improve their chances of being there right at the very end in France.

We perhaps underestimate just how disruptive the noise around the coaching changes would have been and how difficult it must have been to enact game plan changes with a squad picked for a very different type of approach, so credit should be given to the new coaching trio for turning out a coherent, and in the main, winning plan, in some pretty ugly circumstances.