All Blacks 2025
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
@pakman said in All Blacks 2025:
@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
@nonpartizan having had a couple of sessions with Rennie decades ago ( one being defence focused) and usually with a terrible memory, the learnings stuck in my head to this day. Extremely good communicator and enabler.
So how is it best to hold a tackle bag?
Knuckle grip.
Bok hooker is expert: https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/360864814/springboks-front-rower-jan-hendrik-wessels-gets-nine-match-ban-genital-grab
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@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@bayimports said in All Blacks 2025:
@taniwharugby said in All Blacks 2025:
@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...
I don’t think so in my opinion, now not based on stats but I would suggest that our diffusal of contestable kicks is probably down on what it once was, which irritates me even more when we continue to box kick,
Diffusal, refusal, toemato, tomato...
got it, missed it first time

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@Wurzel said in All Blacks 2025:
@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.
One thing I will say is that leadership style heavy on metaphors, corporate wankspeak and "together we walk" crap is fine when things are going well, but when the going gets tough the wheels tend to fall off very quicky. People lose faith in the culture and the direction of the organisation very fast as it's all too fluffy, which is exactly what we saw in that embarrassing performance against SA in Wellington with players actually giving up they were so disillusioned.
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For what it's worth Razor was my 2nd pick to Schmidt, and only because of Schmidt's experience. One of my most heavily upvoted posts on this forum is about how Razor was a far superior candidate to Fozzie, so I wasn't against his appointment.
I'm just frustrated with him now because 1) he has refused to select the best players in the country, 2) the selections of those he has picked in the squad have been consistently poor in key positions and doesn't look like changing, and 3) the gameplan we are implementing doesn't look well suited to the modern version of test footy. So we are less than the sum of our parts right now.
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The tragedy is that I think Scott Robertson could be a fine international coach. But rather than surrounding himself with wise, experienced heads, he went for sycophants and yes men as his assistants. Rather than picking the best players from across New Zealand, he went with those he was comfortable coaching. He drunk his own Kool aid before he's achieved anything at international level.
Ultimately the culpability is with NZR for allowing this to happen.
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I think the dynamic between Robertson and Jason Ryan changed as a result of Ryan coaching the All Blacks for two years with Foster and Schmidt and leading them to the RWC final.
At the Crusader's Robertson the undisputed king but coming into the All Blacks with no previous test experience while Ryan was already a experienced international forward coach has lead Robertson to allowing Ryan too much influence over him and the team. Players Ryan liked and had a relationship with where instantly Robertson's men (Sam Cane and TJ Perenara stand out as the most obvious) and players Ryan disliked were written off without even being given a chance by Robertson.
It appears to me that the last two years Jason Ryan has actually been the All Blacks Head Coach with Scott Robertson in the role of clown media relations man. Robertson needs to put Ryan back in his place as a forwards coach who coaches the best talent NZ rugby can produce or replace him. But this isn't going to happen on this EOYT given the team selected,
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@tubbyj said in All Blacks 2025:
I think the dynamic between Robertson and Jason Ryan changed as a result of Ryan coaching the All Blacks for two years with Foster and Schmidt and leading them to the RWC final.
At the Crusader's Robertson the undisputed king but coming into the All Blacks with no previous test experience while Ryan was already a experienced international forward coach has lead Robertson to allowing Ryan too much influence over him and the team. Players Ryan liked and had a relationship with where instantly Robertson's men (Sam Cane and TJ Perenara stand out as the most obvious) and players Ryan disliked were written off without even being given a chance by Robertson.
It appears to me that the last two years Jason Ryan has actually been the All Blacks Head Coach with Scott Robertson in the role of clown media relations man. Robertson needs to put Ryan back in his place as a forwards coach who coaches the best talent NZ rugby can produce or replace him. But this isn't going to happen on this EOYT given the team selected,
And how do you know all this?
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Does Hansen speak to the players and other coaches the same way he does when interviewed? That would rub a lot of people the wrong way.
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@Mauss said in All Blacks 2025:
And yes, with hindsight there was, once again, too little attention given to international experience. I’m guessing it will return as a deciding factor in the next coaching selection post-2027, which is good news for guys like Jamie Joseph and Vern Cotter (and perhaps even Schmidt and Rennie, should they be interested).
Well, for a little bit of Devil's advocacy....

For all of the "Woe is us" and "All would be well if only we'd got Joe", the scoreline reads Razor 4 - Schmidt 0. Which is better than Sir Graham managed vs Robbie in his first four tests. And while it can be argued that it's "only Australia", it's an Australia that took a test off the Lions and beat SA in SA.
Record vs Rassie isn't great 1-3, but Rassie's coaching a generational SA team and has had umpteen years to get them where they are - and didn't have the same post-2023 exodus that we did.
3-0 vs Borthwick.
3-1 vs Galthie (you can only beat what's in front of you - but, could've been 4-0).
2-2 vs Contepomi, which is the most annoying.
And we've won the rest vs Fiji, Japan, Ireland and Italy.
Looking at a couple of other coaching options - well you couldn't get more international experience than Gatland, but he came back to Super rugby and totally shat the bed. How could this happen?
This time last year, there were strong calls for Cotter to join the squad - but then he took the reigning Champion Blues to a 7-9 record this year. You've got to ask why his significant international experience didn't help him arrest this debacle?
The ultra-internationally experienced Jamie Joseph led his Highlanders to the bottom of the table.
How did these things happen with all this international experience?
And, the maligned Hansen actually has quite a bit of international experience. As has Ryan - he nearly won a RWC.
And now Razor has too. He's coached 23 tests - and only lost 6 compared to all of the guys above.
The genius Rassie is 36/49 = 73.5%
Razor is 17/23 = 73.9%It's not a fucking disaster!
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Mark Watson calling for Razor to be sacked and also all of his remaining assistants on radio today.
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@MacDazzler I was calling for Mark Watson to be sacked 20 years ago on Radio Sport!

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@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
Sounds like Hansen is the cancer that needs excising
Or maybe he's the one who has the clearest vision of what the AB culture should be?
“A very intense fella, very passionate, has a lot of care but is hard on people and wants to get the very best out of people – he’s demanding
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
Sounds like Hansen is the cancer that needs excising
Or maybe he's the one who has the clearest vision of what the AB culture should be?
“A very intense fella, very passionate, has a lot of care but is hard on people and wants to get the very best out of people – he’s demanding
Maybe. But something is amiss
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@MacDazzler said in All Blacks 2025:
@Chris-B I've never heard of him until recently and that bloke is never happy, even when we win.
I hadn't heard of him for years - where's he working now?
In the hey-day of Radio Sport - him, Deaker, Golightly and Lose competed to be the biggest shock-jock.
It was quite entertaining, but if any of them knew much about rugby, they were suppressing it for radio clicks!

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@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
@canefan said in All Blacks 2025:
Sounds like Hansen is the cancer that needs excising
Or maybe he's the one who has the clearest vision of what the AB culture should be?
“A very intense fella, very passionate, has a lot of care but is hard on people and wants to get the very best out of people – he’s demanding
Maybe. But something is amiss
Something's been clearly amiss in managing the coaching set-up since 2010-20