All Blacks 2025
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Or just keep Lord in there.
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I’d take Darry over Lord.
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Would Robertson? Or is Lord there ahead of Darry at the moment because Darry was injured at the time?
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@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
> Darry was Holland before Holland
Then pick them both and go Double Dutch.
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@Dan54 said in All Blacks 2025:
I pretty happy with whoever they take out of Darry or Lord, like em both. Along with Holland very much the future of AB locking stocks until 31-35 WC.
They want to keep them all close, we don't want anyone leaving the country to play overseas
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@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
@Dan54 said in All Blacks 2025:
I pretty happy with whoever they take out of Darry or Lord, like em both. Along with Holland very much the future of AB locking stocks until 31-35 WC.
They want to keep them all close, we don't want anyone leaving the country to play overseas
Yep mate, I love the fact we got it seems some genuine size coming through!!
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What's Jacobson's injury status? Could they keep Lord in the squad and introduce Darry as cover for Tuipulotu? There's more than enough cover in the loose forwards with the other injured players now fit and it'd mean there's less potential for Vaa'i to move back to lock.
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@Dan54 said in All Blacks 2025:
I pretty happy with whoever they take out of Darry or Lord, like em both. Along with Holland very much the future of AB locking stocks until 31-35 WC.
All 3 of them over 2 metres tall
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@ShaquilleOatmeal said in All Blacks 2025:
What's Jacobson's injury status? Could they keep Lord in the squad and introduce Darry as cover for Tuipulotu? There's more than enough cover in the loose forwards with the other injured players now fit and it'd mean there's less potential for Vaa'i to move back to lock.
I would think they'd bring him in for the SA games. No point flying him to Argentina to sit in the stand.
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@cgrant said in All Blacks 2025:
Considering the lack of talents in the backline (10, 11, 13, 14), the All Blacks should revert to a 9 man game. Don't throw the ball wide and insist with the big ball carriers in the tight. The main problem with this kind of tactic is to find a 1st Five with a massive and precise boot.
And yet we had two well executed tries out wide by Reece. Of course we should never throw it willy nilly out wide, for me it’s just being patient in our build up and the wide ball will be on.
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Dominant forwards, great defence, intelligent kicking, pace and great finishing out wide.
That's the blueprint that served the All Blacks very well over the years and what Robertson seems to be trying to work towards.
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Looking at some numbers across the Robertson Tests (2024-25), I’m honestly pretty stumped at what it exactly is that Robertson wants from his first five. If anyone has more of a clue, here are some statistics which might help you but which have, if anything, confused me more.
The baseline: Richie Mo at the Saders
Since Razor has been very explicit about his desire to get Richie Mo’unga back, I took Mo’unga’s performances for the Crusaders in 2022 and ’23 – stats available on RugbyPass and coached by Robertson – as a kind of baseline for both first five output and team direction. Looking at both Mo’unga’s individual contributions (avg. passing, carrying and kicking per game) and the team’s overall numbers (avg. team passing, carrying, kicking, and kick-to-pass ratio per game), you end up with this table.
Table: individual passes, carries and kicks, combined with team passing, carrying, kicking and kick-to-pass ratioMo’unga, across these two seasons which both ended up in championships, averaged around 27 passes and 9-ish carries and kicks per game. The Crusaders, as a whole, passed a lot (about 172 passes per game) but also kicked plenty, ending up with about 1 kick for every 5 passes.
So you’d figure that this is about what Robertson wants to see at Test level: a team that moves the ball around but that doesn’t overplay, making sure to kick often enough in order to play in the right parts of the field and not give their opponents easy scores and momentum.
The reject: Damian McKenzie
When looking at the numbers for McKenzie, against this baseline, you get the impression that the Chiefs playmaker was tossed aside because he was unable to stop the team from overplaying.
McKenzie's 11 starts at 10 during Robertson's tenure: solid averages, inconsistent per-game-outputsWhile McKenzie’s individual passing, carrying and kicking numbers are remarkably consistent with Mo’unga’s, a few games stand out as potential examples of overplaying. The Argentina loss in Wellington, where McKenzie threw 35 passes with the team racking up a 1 to 8.4 kick:pass-ratio. The second South Africa Test where the AB attack kept banging its head into a Springbok defensive wall, without varying up the play. And the near-loss in Sydney, where the team lost complete control against a rampant Wallaby side, with no sign of the first five of being able to change the tide through territorial game management.
So while McKenzie delivered a near-perfect game against Ireland in Dublin – 27 passes, 13 carries, 11 kicks and a team kick:pass-ratio of 1 to 5.8 – perhaps the coaches had already lost faith in their Invercargill-born first five, unconvinced that he’d be able to repeat these efforts Test after Test.
But this is about the place where the logic stops.
The curious case of Beauden Barrett
Robertson and his coaches decide after the Sydney Test that it’s time for another 10 to have a go and give the reins to then 33-year-old Beauden Barrett for the Wellington rematch against the Wallabies. And while the team ends up comfortable victors, the underlying numbers don’t come closer to the Mo’unga-Crusaders baseline but only drift further and further away from them.
I was expecting to find a healthier kick-to-pass ratio with the decision to go with Barrett. Instead, the opposite took placeOnly 5 kicks against the Wallabies in Wellington, 240 passes against just 16 kicks in Paris and nearly 260 passes for a kick:pass-ratio of 1:8.9 in Dunedin against the French in the first Test of July ’25; this represents less a return to the Crusaders’ template than its near-abandonment. Is this really what Robertson would’ve wanted from both Barrett and the team? It’s hard to imagine this being the case, when looking at both the Crusaders baseline as well as the timing of McKenzie being dropped.
It is only in his last two Tests – France in Wellington and Argentina in Cordoba – that Barrett has shown an ability to steer the team in a direction away from overplaying, with a serious drop in both total passing and carrying from the ABs in both games. Putting the emphasis on set piece-excellence and back line efficiency, the team’s attacking effectiveness has also skyrocketed, with an astounding rate of 4.5 points per 22 entry in these two Tests. But then again, it is more of an an equivalence of McKenzie’s performance in Dublin rather than its supersession so it only puts into question: why exactly was McKenzie dropped so unceremoniously in the first place?
Tl;dr
I honestly don’t really have a clue what’s going on with the first five-position. Logic would dictate that Robertson wants his first fives to play like his own Crusaders 10, Richie Mo’unga. The Crusaders were able to play both with and without the ball, changing it up depending on both their opponent and season’s context, but would end up averaging around 170 passes, 120 carries and 25 kicks, for a ratio of 1 kick for every 5 passes.In the All Blacks, neither McKenzie nor Barrett seem capable of reproducing these numbers, the team often overplaying (nearly 200 passes and 140 carries per game) to their own detriment. Both have shown signs of getting it right (McKenzie: SA I 24, IRE 24; Barrett: FRA II 25, ARG I 25) but have also had games where the team clearly lost its way.
Furthermore, I don’t really have a clue why Barrett is so much preferred at the moment. If I had to guess, I’d say Robertson doesn’t want the position to turn into a merry-go-round, sticking to Barrett in order to avoid further disruption. But it’s an unfortunate situation for McKenzie to be in, with seemingly little chance of actually reclaiming the 10-jersey.
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@Mauss so basically their decisions are illogical. Thanks for backing this idea up Mauss!
This preoccupation with older players who aren't up to it is frustrating. BB should be in the squad but he is taking minutes away from DMac who could try and convince the coaches that he can be consistent. Christie is a waste of minutes when we could be looking for the next 9 in line. There is a line between consistency of selection and conservativism and IMHO we are over the line at the moment
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@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
@Mauss so basically their decisions are illogical.
Yeah, the big stumbling block for me is McKenzie being dropped after Sydney. It signals two possible scenarios but each of the two makes little sense when taking other things into account.
Scenario 1: McKenzie was dropped for overplaying
McKenzie overplayed against the Wallabies, allowing them back into the contest and nearly losing the ABs the game. But if this is the case, why persist with Barrett, who pushes the team into even more passing and carrying? The worry here is that the coaches don't want this overplaying nature within the AB game but can't figure out a way to stop it from occurring.Scenario 2: McKenzie was dropped for not playing enough
Perhaps the coaches wanted to push the attack even further and put Barrett at first five with explicit directions to kick less and move the ball through the hands. Then the switch sort of makes sense. But then you get the Mo’unga-question: why push so hard for a first five who you are familiar with, if your new attack is so different from the one you implemented at the Crusaders?Either way, I can’t really figure it out. Like I said in the post above, my guess is they backed themselves into a corner by dropping McKenzie for Barrett, and are now stuck with the latter. Dropping Barrett again would leave you with two dropped first fives and no real alternative.
So now it’s like that Samuel Beckett play, two guys just aimlessly wandering around until the third one hopefully shows up: Waiting for Richie Mo.
