The Silver Fern

Why are people banging on about Savea vs whomever? NZR should always back the coach in this instance, especially against a player that's won sweet fuck all.

@Tim said in All Blacks 2026:

All Blacks review: Ardie Savea future in doubt as NZ Rugby faces player revolt

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/all-blacks-review-ardie-savea-future-in-doubt-as-nz-rugby-faces-player-revolt/JYQLJCBKVVANPAHV442GARJ3KY/

Why does Liam Napier labour under the belief losing a loose forward who does nothing is somehow a negative?

Does anyone seriously believe Razor would walk away from his dream job as a failure? Having had his dream role and outcome taken from him, tainted as a failure despite having everything he wanted provided to him by NZR?

My ideal scenario is Hansen is sacked.
Ardie goes to Japan and isn't selected again.
Scott Barrett isn't burdened with the captaincy.
Some semblance of logic is applied to the selection process for the next squad.

@booboo said in All Blacks 2026:

Watson on Devlin's podcast also mentioning rumours that Hansen is gone. What he has heard apparently.

Given Hansen is apparently the head coach he should be sacked after the last two years. Diabolical.

@Chris said in All Blacks 2026:

The stuff about Mark Anthony for one just isn't true he had been talking to Brighton months ago signed that contract in December,Didn't want to announce it until after the review was finished as it cleaned uphis last work for NZR

Yes that's the bit I believe the least. That process with Brighton would've taken quite some time. Much more than him ringing around saying "hey I need a job, anything goin?"

@junior which would go to my point about it being a great player led environment that demands high standards of the journeymen in the squad.

An obvious mistake to make if that premise is correct is to assign the success to the coaches...

@Chris said in All Blacks 2026:

@antipodean said in All Blacks 2026:

@Chris said in All Blacks 2026:

@antipodean said in All Blacks 2026:

if surf Jesus does fall off his board and takes his incompetent assistants with him, I'd like to see an honest review into why the Crusaders were successful with the same staff.

I've long suspected many players etc have come through NZ rugby's preeminent high performance unit and by virtue of that association have been made to look better than they were and subsequently elevated to positions well above their level.of competency.

And the sneaking position behind all of this is it was largely the great All Blacks who created that environment.

Problem with that is many underperforming ABs have not come through that high performance unit.
just as many that have,have not, there is more Chiefs in that squad than any other SR Team.

The Chiefs haven't been winning SR ad nauseum. Nor their coaching staff all elevated to the national team.

No they haven’t but they have the most players I see a problem there as well.
And a lot under perform so not just a problem from one high performance unit
To me a problem with selection and coaching.

Sure, not that it has much relevance to my point; I want to know what it is about the Crusaders that makes them successful.

@Chris said in All Blacks 2026:

@antipodean said in All Blacks 2026:

if surf Jesus does fall off his board and takes his incompetent assistants with him, I'd like to see an honest review into why the Crusaders were successful with the same staff.

I've long suspected many players etc have come through NZ rugby's preeminent high performance unit and by virtue of that association have been made to look better than they were and subsequently elevated to positions well above their level.of competency.

And the sneaking position behind all of this is it was largely the great All Blacks who created that environment.

Problem with that is many underperforming ABs have not come through that high performance unit.
just as many that have,have not, there is more Chiefs in that squad than any other SR Team.

The Chiefs haven't been winning SR ad nauseum. Nor their coaching staff all elevated to the national team.

if surf Jesus does fall off his board and takes his incompetent assistants with him, I'd like to see an honest review into why the Crusaders were successful with the same staff.

I've long suspected many players etc have come through NZ rugby's preeminent high performance unit and by virtue of that association have been made to look better than they were and subsequently elevated to positions well above their level.of competency.

And the sneaking position behind all of this is it was largely the great All Blacks who created that environment.

@george33 said in All Blacks 2026:

@xman not sure if JJ is in the mix yet .
Other options available apparently.

Like whom? The absolute absence of details doesn't embue me with confidence. On the contrary it reads like someone just putting rambling thoughts to paper.

@taniwharugby typical - the one All Black that doesn't need to improve his aerial skills.

The important bit is they're well positioned to turn this around now they've got a guy in who is a specialist in team culture. Hopefully the coaches give him the space and authority to work his magic.

@george33 said in All Blacks 2026:

@MacDazzler Sam Casey also confirmed that it's very unlikely that Ardie Savea would play again under current AB coaches.

That sems highly unlikely to me given he was picked in basically every team regardless of form and handed captaincy during Scott's injury.

Also the AB Media team fluffing him every possible second.

@mohikamo said in Super Rugby 2026:

The Horowhenua RFU a little fiscal power-house, who’d have thunk it.

I think they got 10 cents everytime they were mentioned on air by Ken Laban.

@Canes4life said in All Blacks 2026:

Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall, but it could be the reasoning Beaudy continues to have the stranglehold on the AB 10 jersey.

Can someone on here access it?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/the-business-of-the-all-blacks-beauden-barrett-and-the-124-billion-american-business-giant-that-helped-pull-new-zealand-rugby-out-of-a-jam/premium/GVOVEVXDNVBJDCJZ6QBHG6PA6A/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=nzh_fb&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwZnRzaAPQRe1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEecBoE-dhKKffPL_-8Ar-hss59pqsMY7vuzobVQ7m52zcctNyBeWP5DZfzOdQ_aem_SIe7kBEH-9AwP7-f8nfMlA#Echobox=1767925392

Not available on the Wayback machine yet. But the company must be Gallagher Insurance.

@mohikamo said in Exodus:

@Duluth said in Exodus:

That's a point a lot of people don't understand. They keep speaking like any changes will just shuffle the same amount of cash around. There's ways of making a much more compelling competition which would increase the revenue

One thing I think NZR has really got its head around, is the financials.
If there is any spare revenue floating around in the NZ economy, they'll be on to it in a flash.
Looks like NZR have kinda written off domestic pro rugby.
If there was any possibility of making a meaningful change, they'd have done it.
It is a just a drain on their line.

It was compelling in olden times; 40 or 50,000 at a Ranfurly shield game; world class players all over the field . . . great days.

And they were astute enough to further develop that into Super Rugby. Then somewhere along the way they ruined it instead of cleverly adapting it.

It was clear a long time ago that Australia couldn't compete on an equal footing. To me, and I've said this before, the answer was to dilute the strength of the New Zealand squads by adding more. Then you'd have a 30 week competition (10 NZ teams and 5 Oz) which would add the seasonal amount of rugby required, would boost the skill and depth element of players through opportunity, and grow the market in Australia because they'd no longer be regular whipping boys.

More interest. More games. More value to broadcasters.

@Dan54 said in Super Rugby 2026:

@African-Monkey said in Super Rugby 2026:

@frugby said in Super Rugby 2026:

@Duluth said in Super Rugby 2026:

@frugby said in Super Rugby 2026:

I think there should be more teams and the larger ones should be broken up. There should be more opportunities for players to play close to their home.. that makes for a more tribal competition with more interest.

I find this quite fascinating. Have recently been in the UK, and the sheer density of population/football teams in London is incredible, and it goes back to your first point.

Why is it, that Auckland, a city of 1.5m, struggles to support two Super Rugby teams, given rugby is our national game?

Sydney is about 2x as big and they support 9 NRL teams.

Is it better to look at the population of rugby fans as opposed to actual population?

I think a ranking of average crowd size for the 14 NPC sides + the 5 Super Rugby sides would be interesting.

Auckland also has The Wahs and Auckland FC to compete with, and with a cost of living crisis, rugby is bring squeezed out by rival codes. Compare that with the population of the Canterbury region which is about 700,000 currently and growing and has ONE professinal sports team. Lets see how they cope once they eventually get a league team down the track. There's no competition currently in the South Island and the crowds down there are still pathetic most of the time.

Sydney is also not 2 times as big, it has a population of 5.5 mil.

Yep bang on AM, it's pretty different when you look Sydney has population of whole of NZ .
Problem is getting that 5.5 mill to stadiums involves a fair bit of travelling.
Brisbane las about double pop of Auckland doesn't it, and has one of each code , I think, with a couple of teams in surrounding cities? My main take is travel and of course w got a lot of people who these days quite enjoy the convenience of sitting on couches?

If you count the Goldy and Sunshine Coast (and you should) then Brisbane is over 3.5 million

And while there's been rationalisation in this millennium, if your region/ suburb had a NRL team, you had a stadium which was "reasonably" well serviced by public transport. Or certainly better than driving which is an act of self loathing.

Australia is also much more willing to waste taxpayer funds on infrastructure.

The other issue is while Australians generally support winners, my experience is there's a considerable discrepancy between codes when their team sucks. Rugby appears to be the worst- "fans" stop attending when their team sucks and are amazingly ignorant of the laws.

Boy, you fans sure are a contentious lot

@Canes4life said in Hurricanes 2026:

I don’t go on about Proctor nearly as much as you think.

Certainly not now we know how he'd perform in a black jersey.