All Blacks 2025
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@jimmyb said in All Blacks 2025:
@nostrildamus said in All Blacks 2025:
@jimmyb said in All Blacks 2025:
There is clearly no self belief in the team; and half of that is to do with the fact that none of them outside of the crusaders players and Beuden (back in the glory days when he’d come off the bench) have ever won anything.
If you mean nationally or internationally then you are wrong.
What has changed is that we don’t have a leadership team and the on field presence that gives players the confidence to rise above domestic failures and perform on the international stage.
This is a reach. It's the ABs. There is a legacy to work for.
I’m sure we call work hard at our jobs and are/have leaders that know how to steer the team/company through a tough situation. Do any of those players inspire a single ounce of grit or determination?
Yes, Taylor; probably Ardie; Roigard too I suspect. Against England Jordie showed that as well.
Now that we have lost Smith, Retallick, Whitelock, Cane, and Coles, we lost the last of a generation of an era that knew how to lead and think on the pitch. I don’t think we should be under any illusions that that core was what pulled us through the final RWC2023.
5 people (4 forwards) is a reasonably-sized core.
Not sure how to format the replies like you did but:
Either and I’m right. The blues players sneaking in a title when the crusaders had an off season doesn’t count. The low hanging fruit of a Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship while South Africa was out? Not sure that counts.
Might as well disregard the Crusaders’ titles and the winning mentality of those players too. The other teams in the competition were all useless and didn’t know how to win.
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Or maybe the Blues won when they had a 10 running the show?
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Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
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@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
Don't feed the troll.
Winning only counts if you're from the Crusaders. It's not a good mindset. Great players are great players, no matter where they come from. AA Ron Smith was insanely competitive, despite playing for an (ahem) small market team. Darren Lockyer (one of the finest league fullbacks in my opinion) was spotted by Wayne Bennett in a team getting humiliated. Mental strength and toughness is either in people or it's not.
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@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
Don't feed the troll.
Winning only counts if you're from the Crusaders. It's not a good mindset. Great players are great players, no matter where they come from. AA Ron Smith was insanely competitive, despite playing for an (ahem) small market team. Darren Lockyer (one of the finest league fullbacks in my opinion) was spotted by Wayne Bennett in a team getting humiliated. Mental strength and toughness is either in people or it's not.
Maybe we should get a winning coach from that level
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@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
Don't feed the troll.
Winning only counts if you're from the Crusaders. It's not a good mindset. Great players are great players, no matter where they come from. AA Ron Smith was insanely competitive, despite playing for an (ahem) small market team. Darren Lockyer (one of the finest league fullbacks in my opinion) was spotted by Wayne Bennett in a team getting humiliated. Mental strength and toughness is either in people or it's not.
Maybe we should get a winning coach from that level
It's fascinating eh. Foster's late run, Razor's struggles and Penney's Super victory this year have reframed some of what - on the face of it - was a remarkable achievement. How much is the machine, how much is the players, how much is the coach?
Still reckon Sir Graham was right: Razor would be a better coach with experience offshore.
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@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
Don't feed the troll.
Winning only counts if you're from the Crusaders. It's not a good mindset. Great players are great players, no matter where they come from. AA Ron Smith was insanely competitive, despite playing for an (ahem) small market team. Darren Lockyer (one of the finest league fullbacks in my opinion) was spotted by Wayne Bennett in a team getting humiliated. Mental strength and toughness is either in people or it's not.
Carlos Spencer got discovered while playing for Horowhenua who were getting a hiding from Auckland if I remember rightly, he then played for them next season.
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The biggest threat to the All Blacks is the All Blacks
The biggest threat to the All Blacks is the All Blacks and their inability to get so many of the absolute basics right.
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@MN5 said in All Blacks 2025:
@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
@kiwiinmelb said in All Blacks 2025:
Each year only one team can win the title , so there’s always going to be a lot of players in our pool that aren’t winners at that level .
Don't feed the troll.
Winning only counts if you're from the Crusaders. It's not a good mindset. Great players are great players, no matter where they come from. AA Ron Smith was insanely competitive, despite playing for an (ahem) small market team. Darren Lockyer (one of the finest league fullbacks in my opinion) was spotted by Wayne Bennett in a team getting humiliated. Mental strength and toughness is either in people or it's not.
Carlos Spencer got discovered while playing for Horowhenua who were getting a hiding from Auckland if I remember rightly, he then played for them next season.
He was , Auckland chased him after the Shield match in Levin, also tried for another young player from that match who wasn't really interested from what I recall.
Mind you that was and still is the case, good talent spotters know what is good regardless of results. -
@pakman summed up by this sentence; the consistent theme of Robertson’s increasingly average tenure is that the substitutes are incapable of getting into the game, let alone positively impacting it - everything else is filler.
Now that a couple of journos have had the balls to suggest the bleedingly obvious, it seems they're now turning on the very bloke they cheered for like giggling schoolgirls.
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@nzzp said in All Blacks 2025:
Still reckon Sir Graham was right: Razor would be a better coach with experience offshore.
That didn't fit with the NZR Board's plans though.
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I still believe Robertson is a very good head coach - his issue may be that some of his assistant aren't quite up to scratch at this level.
You don't have the success he has had and it be a total fluke.
And I still say, there is every possibility that these players are of the level of the 3rd or 4th best team in the world, hence why we are getting results as such.
I don't think these players are bad, but outside of Will Jordan, I don't think any of these players at their current age and stages crack the 2015 side.
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@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
I still believe Robertson is a very good head coach - his issue may be that some of his assistant aren't quite up to scratch at this level.
You don't have the success he has had and it be a total fluke.
Maybe he's just not good enough at Test level? A bit like George Bridge - he was successful for the Crusaders too.
I agree with Henry and Hansen - NZR should have insisted he was tested at International level before being given the job. But we are where we are.
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@Victor-Meldrew But he was the head coach of Brazil!
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
Maybe he's just not good enough at Test level?
Like Guy Novès. A serial winner with Toulouse but only a 33% win ratio with France.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
I still believe Robertson is a very good head coach - his issue may be that some of his assistant aren't quite up to scratch at this level.
You don't have the success he has had and it be a total fluke.
Maybe he's just not good enough at Test level? A bit like George Bridge - he was successful for the Crusaders too.
I agree with Henry and Hansen - NZR should have insisted he was tested at International level before being given the job. But we are where we are.
As Wayne Bennett said, 'Don't listen to the public otherwise you'll be sitting with them'.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
I still believe Robertson is a very good head coach - his issue may be that some of his assistant aren't quite up to scratch at this level.
You don't have the success he has had and it be a total fluke.
Maybe he's just not good enough at Test level? A bit like George Bridge - he was successful for the Crusaders too.
I agree with Henry and Hansen - NZR should have insisted he was tested at International level before being given the job. But we are where we are.
I am a long way from being a Robertson supporter, that should be pretty clear.
But it's not comparable to George Bridge, who was a good winger benefitting from playing in the best team. If anyone it's more Reuben Thorne - the guy leading the best team to the best results - but even then it's quite different in that player performances are highly visible to the public, whereas coaching is pretty much completely opaque other than final results.
By international experience, what do you mean? Coaching a national side, or coaching a club/provincial side in another country? If a national side, clearly you think Brazil doesn't count - where is the line? And do you mean as a head coach, or as an assistant coach? Robertson also played in both Japan and France, so he has some experience in other environments.
Any which way, I find it dogmatic. There are definitely aspects of test rugby in terms of prep time and tournament play vs prepping for a long season that are different, but these things are never black and white. Nobody has ever done something until they have.If he's not good enough and our results are shit, I'm all for sacking him - I can't understand some of his selections, his tactics, half the sentences that come out of his mouth are nonsense or contradictory - but I don't want to see his failures being put down to some arbitrary missing requirement for international experience, whatever that means, which can then be used to rule out our next good candidate.
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It’s a difficult one , I think there is a couple of things going on ,
He isn’t the innovative genius he was painted out to be , and to go with that , our talent pool isn’t necessarily superior to our opponents in the way it has been in the past .
If it was he might be doing better and everyone would be thinking it’s all ok . But it isn’t and his coaching comes under the microscope more and more if we aren’t dominating, like people were expecting when the messiah takes over .
