All Blacks 2025
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@nostrildamus said in All Blacks 2025:
He's dyslexic, I can understand the use of visual images. But farm animals as rugby players? I'm not convinced by The Office comparison for Razor. Given other reports, I'm going with Wallace Footrot.
That time Sue met rugby legend Scott Robertson
Scott Robertson walks onto the plane and every male is thinking,“Sit by me. Sit by me.” Instead, he sits in a window seat beside the only person who doesn’t know his name, what team he coaches, or even how the season is going for him...me.
Whilst Razor probably enjoyed the peace and quiet imagine if he sat by someone from the fern. The moment they landed and he could switch his phone off flight mode he'd be on the blower to Dalton Papalii, Hoskins Sotutu and maybe even Akira Ioane getting them straight back in the team.
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@ShaquilleOatmeal didnt we always hear it didnt matter who coached the ABs?
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@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@ShaquilleOatmeal didnt we always hear it didnt matter who coached the ABs?
John Hart didn't hear that.
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@MN5 said in All Blacks 2025:
he'd be on the blower to Dalton Papalii,
too good a defender
Hoskins Sotutu
too talented an 8. Plus he's tall, and good in a lineout. Preposterous suggestion.
and maybe even Akira Ioane
Can't. Once they're overseas Robertson doesn't even think about them. Ever. Never. Ever.
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@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@ShaquilleOatmeal said in All Blacks 2025:
@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
Suggesting Scott Robertson is some Ted Lasso, David Brent character just ain’t it. The guy has won basically every season of his career until now.
He has underwhelmed in black no doubt, but he isn’t an idiot.
With stacked teams, full of professionals who knew how to prepare, train and execute regardless of the coach or who responded to the motivational mumbo jumbo and didn't need anything else to perform to their best. How well would Robertson have done with the Highlanders, going up against teams with better players? His appointment was absolutely justified by his success at lower levels but he's now looking like a myth.
So why wasn't Blackadder successful? Why haven't Canterbury won the NPC since 2018? It's the players when it goes well, but the coaches when it goes bad?
Don't know. Could have been because Blackadder was just a really bad coach, the players didn't respond to his style at all, the competition was stronger for the most part, the other teams just had better lineups during that time. Not that many Crusaders coaches have been unsuccessful so there must be a reason.
Looking at teams Robertson has coached, Canterbury won the NPC the five years before Robertson took over and the two years after he left, the Crusaders won Super Rugby this year and we all know how amazing their recruitment and talent identification is, the NZ U20 team won the year before Robertson had the job.
I just think he's had the privilege of coaching teams with historically more talented lineups and we don't know if he would have had the same success without that advantage. He didn't want to test himself coaching overseas, away from Canterbury and the Crusaders.
Maybe his 'style' of coaching doesn't work unless he has that talent. We’re seeing Robertson face that test now and he’s not doing well so far.
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@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@ShaquilleOatmeal so all the Crusaders he worked with over those successive championships were dummies
Not “all”, some weren’t from Canterbury.
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@mariner4life said in All Blacks 2025:
@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@mariner4life Article on PR today, Ardie reckons ABs are in a better place in 2025 than 2024 and heading in right direction...
well, ok. i feel better.
How can you not after that sterling defensive display in Wellington. Much better than 2024.
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@antipodean said in All Blacks 2025:
@mariner4life said in All Blacks 2025:
@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@mariner4life Article on PR today, Ardie reckons ABs are in a better place in 2025 than 2024 and heading in right direction...
well, ok. i feel better.
How can you not after that sterling defensive display in Wellington. Much better than 2024.
as long as the boys are happy you know? it is, after all, only a game.
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@mariner4life well, it is meant to be fun, and it didnt look like they were having fun!!
Winning is infinitely more fun than losing, but if you gonna lose, at least look like you still want to win!
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@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@ShaquilleOatmeal said in All Blacks 2025:
@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
Suggesting Scott Robertson is some Ted Lasso, David Brent character just ain’t it. The guy has won basically every season of his career until now.
He has underwhelmed in black no doubt, but he isn’t an idiot.
With stacked teams, full of professionals who knew how to prepare, train and execute regardless of the coach or who responded to the motivational mumbo jumbo and didn't need anything else to perform to their best. How well would Robertson have done with the Highlanders, going up against teams with better players? His appointment was absolutely justified by his success at lower levels but he's now looking like a myth.
So why wasn't Blackadder successful? Why haven't Canterbury won the NPC since 2018? It's the players when it goes well, but the coaches when it goes bad?
We've done this before.
Some here-ish.
Some here.
Some of those old threads are fun reading, now that we see the results with Razor.
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@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
Suggesting Scott Robertson is some Ted Lasso, David Brent character just ain’t it. The guy has won basically every season of his career until now.
He has underwhelmed in black no doubt, but he isn’t an idiot.
I dunno man, taking one of your most senior players who is clearly a smart guy and showing him pictures of farm animals and asking him to bark at his team mates like a dog seems pretty idiotic to me. I am a bit taken aback by that haha.
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@No-Quarter I read 'bark' to be a metaphor for him driving his team, rather than literally barking like a dog?
Still an odd way to deliver the message.
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@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@No-Quarter I read 'bark' to be a metaphor for him driving his team, rather than literally barking like a dog?
Two years ago I'd have gone with the former, now not so much...
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Our current defensive structure is still my main concern - why not employ the highly regarded Cory Jane to oversee our defence (who is already on NZR's payroll as D-coach for both Hurricanes and ABs XV) and move Ellison back to his original role of breakdown & contact skills coach?
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Cory one of our own bomb refusal experts, if he can pass that on, I’m in
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@bayimports said in All Blacks 2025:
Cory one of our own bomb refusal experts, if he can pass that on, I’m in
Hmm, I thought bomb refusal was what our team was doing so well currently...
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@No-Quarter said in All Blacks 2025:
@frugby said in All Blacks 2025:
Suggesting Scott Robertson is some Ted Lasso, David Brent character just ain’t it. The guy has won basically every season of his career until now.
He has underwhelmed in black no doubt, but he isn’t an idiot.
I dunno man, taking one of your most senior players who is clearly a smart guy and showing him pictures of farm animals and asking him to bark at his team mates like a dog seems pretty idiotic to me. I am a bit taken aback by that haha.
If you read the entire book our most-capped and one of our most revered All Blacks talks about how that message resonated with him. He credits the interaction with taking his leadership to a new and necessary level.
I'm willing to bet said All Black is a better judge of what makes a good rugby coach than any of us tapping our little brains out on a message board.
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I don’t mind the analogy, but if that is Razor’s core skill, it doesn’t seem like he is suited to truly high performance at the top of the tree coaching of a rep team.
That sounds like a strategy for a coach who is there to bring together younger and senior players in an ongoing season to season role.
To be the AB coach, it sounds like a very different skill set and thus far it doesn’t seem that the strategic clarity is there, even if he is a visionary.
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@ShaquilleOatmeal said in All Blacks 2025:
I just think he's had the privilege of coaching teams with historically more talented lineups and we don't know if he would have had the same success without that advantage. He didn't want to test himself coaching overseas, away from Canterbury and the Crusaders.
His foray into the NZ U20's wasn't great either.
He was clearly NZR's poster boy and there's the nagging suspicion he was a "face fits" hire more than anything else. NZR have to support him and the players to get thru this mess - though not naming Holland's successor when he resigned shows a disturbing lack of nous.
