The Silver Fern

@yeahbutnah said in 1 second ruck - squidge:

Again caveated by me not really knowing what I’m talking about but the offloads in that second test felt more squidge aligned than the first.

Bit of a late (and long..) reply but I was reminded of your remark when watching the NPC.

While there’s certainly a trend in World Rugby these past few years in terms of the attacking offload, in my own view the AB offload plan is more (1) a response to a trend that has been endemic within NZ Rugby itself, and (2) something that deeply originates from within Canterbury rugby, rather than representing an outside influence.

I think, first of all, what Robertson wants to move away from – and which they did reasonably well against the French – is the tendency within NZ Rugby (Super, NPC, AB 7s) to throw blind, speculative offloads.

Watching the Wellington-Canterbury game, there were two very good examples of what, I think, the AB coaches don’t want to see in terms of offloading, where the team does the hard work to create the line break, only for players to throw an offload which isn’t on, effectively wasting the possession and the line break.

First, Love, after making the break from a nicely set up scrum attack, throws the blind offload to his right with the try line in his sight, which is duly intercepted by Punivai. Then, in the second half, Proctor bursts through the line off a rather chaotic but well-timed move, only for him to throw an offload from a compromised position (out of balance, falling to the ground), leading to another turnover. The timing of these turnovers is indicative as well – at the 35th and 45th minutes, respectively – which are typically momentum-shifting points in the game.

While the mindset from Love and Proctor seems like the right one for a fluid attack – KBA, keeping the ball alive, the buzzword from a few years ago – the application, in these instances, is the wrong one. With the Canterbury players consistently trying to get into the passing lanes, the Wellington backs need to have eyes on their support and their hands free to make sure they can efficiently transfer the ball and keep the attack going. If there’s no support visible or the opposition player has you wrapped up, it’s better to take contact and attack the fractured defensive line in a new phase.

It is this kind of wrong application that, I think, the AB coaches are trying to eradicate from their attack, as the ABs simply produced too many turnovers after line breaks in the 2024 season, which cost them a lot of points and more than a few results as well. But looking at some of the decision-making around the offload in the NPC – from All Blacks and experienced campaigners – that won’t be easy as those are some ingrained habits.

Secondly, I believe this kind of emphasis on ‘communicative offloading’ (that’s not a real term but it makes sense to me) isn’t so much something that comes from outside but is rather a foundational premise from Robertson’s coaching background. A central principle of Canterbury and Crusaders rugby – again, mostly stemming from the mind of Wayne Smith – is to finish line breaks with a try. There was only one category that the Crusader attack was ranked first in this season in Super Rugby (Opta Stats), and that was the % of line breaks leading to a try (44.1%). Globally, this ranked only behind the Bulls from South Africa and the two current French powerhouses, Toulouse and Bordeaux Bègles.

But that’s not the Crusaders trying to replicate French or South African trends (as I think someone like Squidge is implying); that is Crusaders’ DNA being recreated around the world (it’s not a coincidence that Ronan O’Gara started talking about KBA after coaching in Christchurch for a few years).

But for this to work at AB-level, the speculative offload needs to be replaced by a smarter offloading game (low-risk, high-reward offloads) to visible support, which I think is what we’ve been seeing more of during the French Test series. But the real test will come against the Boks, who are masters at breaking up support play after line breaks (both legally and illegally).

@Bovidae said in Manawatu v North Harbour:

Good impact from Sam Coles off the bench.

Yeah, nice cameos from Sam Coles and Jai Tamati off the bench, Coles creating a few line breaks and Tamati putting in some nice kicks in behind. If Coles has been able to improve his defence, I’d like to see him start in the 15-jersey.

Impressed by Kyle Brown as well, really slippery player and good decision-making on attack. Young Turbos are looking good.

@Bovidae said in Manawatu v North Harbour:

Are the cameras not good enough for NPC games?

I don't think there's a need to question the cameras, that's just terrible refereeing.

Malakai Hala-Ngatai looks to be in great shape. He's shed quite a few kg's, I'd think, but he's holding his own so far against Sione Mafileo in the scrum so it doesn't seem to have impacted his ability at set-piece too much. He seems like a player who's actually benefitted from regular game time in the MLR.

Also, it's weirding me out how Parsons is continuously referring to Jed Melvin as the veteran. The guy is 24 years old and has played 29 games for Harbour. Even for NPC standards, that's not that experienced.

@pakman said in Auckland v Waikato:

Are the ABs/Super teams too ‘refined’ to employ such blunt instruments?

They’d be silly to think like that which, to be clear, I don’t think they do. I’m pretty sure that Robertson and Ryan would love nothing more than a player like Valetini at 6. For me, it’s more a question of when and where is a player like Saifoloi supposed to actually develop into the kind of ‘blunt instrument’ which could be effective in Test rugby, if not in the NPC?

Right now, playing for Waikato, it’s generic one-size-fits-all rugby, especially in terms of forwards’ structures. Filipo would most likely claim they don’t really have the squad together for long enough to experiment with game plans, which is fair enough. But when Saifoloi then goes to the Crusaders, he’ll still most likely be considered too raw to get much game time. Plus the Crusaders don’t really play a lot of one-off rugby off 9 in multi-phase, so he won’t really learn there either.

So the main issue for me is more that players like Saifoloi don’t really have a clear pathway up the NZ Rugby pyramid through which they can develop the kind of physical dominance-game that’s so valuable in Test rugby. Most teams simply play in too similar a fashion for different styles of players to effectively come through. There’s been some nice variation in attack shapes in the NPC in recent years, like with Taranaki, but that variation hasn’t really taken place in terms of forward play, as far as I can tell.

I was interested in the blindside match-up in this game – 1.95m, 114 kg Xavier Saifoloi vs. 1.94m, 105+ kg (he looks to have put on a bit of weight?) Che Clark – as they’re two bigger bodies with a lot of potential.

Watching a player like Saifoloi, however, constantly hanging around in the 15 metre channel while watching the play unfold on the other side of the field – neither finding ways to get himself involved, nor his teammates succeeding in getting him involved – was more than a bit frustrating.

Part of this is on Saifoloi, of course, not having the rugby sense to make the play come to him (this also becomes further apparent when comparing his positioning and involvements to Andrew Smith, his replacement, who was much more active in looking for ball and contact). But part of this is also, I think, on NZ Rugby’s inability – I believe it’s a countrywide issue – to properly find ways to both (1) create game plans which gets the most out of these bigger bodies and (2) upskill and develop these players to their full potential.

A player like Saifoloi isn’t meant, in my view, to play 73 minutes while barely getting any involvements. You use a player like that to physically bully the opposition and dominate the gain line, making him empty the tank for 45 minutes and then sub him.

Watching last week’s Test between the Wallabies and British and Irish Lions, it was obvious how valuable big bodies are in modern day rugby. There are plenty of players like Skelton and Valetini in New Zealand; the issue, however, is you need to start using them to the best of their abilities rather than just make them play the same 1-3-3-1 edge forward template. Give players like Saifoloi the ball in his hands and tell him to smash the opposition until he’s out of gas.

Good game, though.

@Duluth said in Taranaki v Northland:

1 Jared Proffit
2 Bradley Slater
3 Reuben O'Neill
4 Fiti Sa
5 Josh Lord

Very solid tight 5 at this level. You'd imagine they'll go very well at scrum and maul time. Might not be the most mobile unit, though, so that might be at least one area where players like Renata, Craig and Caird have the upper hand.

Looking ahead to next year (and why an NZ U18 side would be a real benefit to the NZ U20s too)

With the 2025 U20 campaign over, I was thinking about how next year’s U20 team could shape up and where its potential strengths and weaknesses would be. But as I put together a (very much preliminary) potential 23, it did become more clear to me why NZR would’ve wanted to put an NZ U18 team in place in its pathways, especially when comparing it to a potential Junior Wallaby side for next year. While NZR eventually caved to the schools’ demand to retain NZ Schools as the primary age grade team at U18 level, for 2025 at least – see: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/sport/561272/nz-rugby-drop-plan-to-establish-under-18-team – I’m not sure the current structure serves the pathway particularly well.

If cohesion is a real thing – I’m not quite as convinced of Ben Darwin’s arguments as some others but still – then it’s easy to see how Rugby Australia and the Junior Wallabies are trying to create a performance-edge by optimizing and narrowing their pathways.

There’s quite a bit of overlap for players – e.g. Raharuhi Palmer playing for both NZ U18 Barbarians and Māori U18 in 2024, Angus Grover playing for both AU U18 and AU U18 Sevens – but the idea is more to display different levels of variation and cohesion rather than predictive accuracy per se.

While the NZ U20s are potentially drawing from 6 different national rep environments – NZ Schools, NZ U18 Barbarians, Māori U18, plus 7s teams such as NZ U18 Sevens, New Edition and NZ Cavaliers from the 2024 Global Youth Sevens – the Australians have tried to significantly streamline their pathways. The concept seems pretty clear: identify players as soon as possible and get them playing together, so they can develop their shared understanding of each other’s playing styles and habits.

Furthermore, there seems to be a logic to these two AU pathways as well, the forwards playing together for the AU U18s while the backs also spend considerable time together at the AU U18 Sevens team. It is worth noting that the AU U18 Sevens squad dominated the Global Youth Sevens in 2024, where they looked very well coached and tactically prepared.

Players across the Ta$man also look to have clear predecessors in their pathway. A player like Wallace Charlie, the MVP of the Global Youth Sevens, looks destined to follow in the footsteps of the 2025 Junior Wallaby standout, Sid Harvey, the latter also excelling at the Global Youth Sevens before going into AU 7s, and eventually returning to the XVs game at U20 level. Charlie has followed Sid Harvey’s path into AU 7s, making his debut at this year’s LA SVNS tournament. He’ll hope to recreate Harvey’s impact at U20 level as well.

As far as next year’s NZ U20s are concerned, their pathways seem much more chaotic and muddled. One way they’ve been trying to circumvent this chaos, is by using the NZ U18 Barbarians (instead of NZ Schools) as a real development team, with many of the 2024 Barbarian backline already involved with the 2025 NZ U20s (Wiseman, Lewai, Muliaina). As the 2024 NZ U18 Barbarians used a similar attack shape to the 2025 NZ U20s (one would expect that this was by design), these players were already familiar with some of the attaching structures and requirements at the next level.

The typical L-shape attack we’ve seen with the NZ U20s, with a combined horizontal and vertical line of runners/pass targets in motion, already in play with the 2024 NZ U18 Barbarians, run by Mika Muliaina against Samoa U18s

With no centralized U18 high performance team, combinations will need to be found at other places. The loose forwards will most likely be more than familiar with each other, as the primary candidates will have already played a lot together this year for the NZ U20s – McLeod, Woodley, Fale. Then again, you’d wonder how much smoother and effective this loose forward trio could’ve been, if they’d already formed a combination at U18 level. The tight five, on the other hand, will largely have to start from scratch, although selectors might look for combinations at SR U20-level such as Leota, Tatafu and Brown who are all in the Blues pathways together.

Of course, I’m not saying that this is how things will pan out, especially in terms of personnel that is concerned. There are always injuries as well as players putting their hands up in SR U20 (U19 for AU) or club rugby. These teams could look completely different when 2026 comes around. But, for argument’s sake, when looking at the two rosters above from a cohesion-perspective, you’d understand why NZR would want a NZ U18 team.

As NZ age grade sides are leaning more and more into tactical innovation and complexity, players will need time to learn patterns and systems, as well as each other's habits and playing styles. Having an NZ U18 team would allow for this, while also creating a player culture which can be replicated at U20 level. In this sense, it seems only a matter of time before the NZ Schools team will eventually have to make way for an NZ U18 team which can combine players from First XV and club rugby.

@NTA said in Wallabies vs Lions III:

Alaatoa's early hit is a consequence, not a cause IMHO

I'd agree with that. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the timing and togetherness of the Wallaby pack as a whole was off, rather than just pointing the finger at Porter for angling in.

I don't understand enough of the mechanics of the scrum to really pinpoint a single point of origin, so I'll leave that to the expertise of others.

@pakman said in Wallabies vs Lions III:

https://x.com/Rugby_Scoop/status/1949378660773089488

In that same thread, there’s an interesting overhead view of the first scrum penalty against the Wallabies, with a lot of people again focusing on Porter’s boring in. But when you slow it down and focus just on the actions of the Wallaby pack, then I’d argue the main issue is their faulty timing.

Alaalatoa is a split second ahead of his fellow front-rowers but this split second ripples through the entire pack. Most importantly, the second row loses their connection with the front row, Skelton falling to one knee and Frost being in a diagonal position, leaving both unable to get a decent push on. Furthermore, Wilson detaches almost immediately at the back.

As a result, the togetherness of the Wallaby pack is severely compromised, which the Lions forwards sense and exploit by attacking as a collective. And while Porter is scrumming at an angle, I’d say that, on the whole, the Lions pack shows more cohesion and power in a forward direction.

As the former Wallaby prop Topo Rodriguez writes in his book, Rugby: The Art of Scrummaging (2015, revised ed.), “The necessary timing can’t be achieved if the scrum operates in two sections [...], it has to be the whole eight thinking, acting and reacting as one (89)." Mike Cron would’ve not been pleased, I imagine.

Fun watch. There were some interesting tidbits in there too, I thought: the defensive review-session was a lot more brutal than I would’ve expected; Aidan Ross emphasizing again and again how he dreamed about being a Steamer much more than he did being a Chief or All Black when he was young (and this in the week he’s called into Wallabies camp..); Kaleb Trask coming across a lot sharper when he’s in first five-mode.

I also thought Kurt Eklund came across well, really calm and assured when speaking to the players in a huddle (which is easier said than done, if anybody’s seen Maro Itoje’s captain speeches in the behind the scenes-footage from the Lions). It’ll be nearly 10 years now since Eklund made his debut in the NPC for Auckland. I think it’s fair to say he was quite raw and error-prone in those early years. But what a player he’s turned out to be.

@voodoo said in Wallabies v Lions II:

I didn’t watch a lot of Super rugby this year, but watching Wilson in this game, it was also noticeable that he was getting smacked on most carries. Has he dropped some weight or lost some power? I don’t recall this from past internationals

Wilson’s game has never really been about dominant carries. There was an interview last year in the Brisbane Times with Scott Higginbotham, where the latter compared Wilson’s style of play to his own.

“Wilso reminds me a bit of myself, him and I are the kind of guys that run holes … some guys don’t like that, some coaches will look at a No.8 and want them to commit defenders and have big contacts and carries.
“When coaches pick teams, it’ll come down to whether he likes a No.8 who is more about attracting defenders … or do you want someone who hits holes, gets offloads and try assists?
“What we have to realise is everyone is different and plays a different style of game in the position they play.
“But I think for Wilso, he’s got a knack for running in between defenders and I think that’s better.”

Nick Wright  /  Mar 28, 2024  /  Rugby Union

Wilson’s axing left him ‘distraught’. A Wallabies star reveals comeback path

A former champion reveals how the man he passed the baton to can regain his national place. But his old club needs to change.

So I don’t anything has really happened to Wilson. He’s never really been a guy that bounces off defenders like Valetini does, so it’s best to play them together like Schmidt wants to. But when Valetini goes off early, like he did yesterday, Wilson’s game becomes much less effective because there’s no one left to create the space to run through.

@Bovidae said in School Rugby 2025:

The final will be PNBHS v RBHS. Rotorua won in Palmy last round.

Those two have been the pretty clear standout teams this year. I thought PNBHS got bullied a bit in the forwards in their previous match-up. While most First XV teams struggle to find a real blindside, I’d argue that all three of Rotorua’s loosies – Mailulu, Hutchings and Rogers – are natural blindsides, focused first and foremost on winning the collision. PNBHS needs to front up, attack the breakdown and look to move the Rotorua pack around.

The contest between the two fullbacks should also be good. Hunter Kennedy hasn’t looked as dynamic since his injury a couple rounds ago but hopefully he can showcase his counter-attacking ability. Tokoaitua Owen – who apparently has some rugby league connections?– is just such a smooth and smart player. Great footwork, calm under pressure and excellent decision-maker.

St Peter’s is undefeated and the top seed for the SFs.

I’ve only been able to see two games from St. Peter’s but they look like a good side. I was impressed by Brad Meek’s ball-carrying at lock, and their backline is one of the better ones running around. Feilding look very strong to me, though. Fakava and Raviyawa in the pack, with Havea and Tuituba as gamebreakers in the backs. I haven’t seen a lot of 9s who’ve stood out this year but Karnyae Rohipa-WaiWai looks like a quality halfback to me. Throws a speedy pass and just looks very comfortable.

@Canes4life said in Wallabies v Lions II:

Looked like he was playing touch rugby on a couple occasions.

I thought Ikitau was uncharacteristically poor in the tackle as well, some really soft misses. Shame they couldn't get it done but it's always going to be hard if your midfield defence is a sieve.

Lions really targeting Sua'ali'i in the 13 channel, Kinghorn was able to waltz through there. Not sure why you wouldn't just have Ikitau defending at 13.

Jorgensen has been really impressive in this series so far. Still only 20 years old.

I thought McDermott had some nice touches on the wing for that Wright try. They're asking a lot of him, though, coming on at the wing, especially from a defence perspective. But it's good to have him on the field, inspirational player.

@Duluth said in 2025 All Blacks v France series:

I think it was the second Test when Holland dropped a few kickoffs?

Yeah, one where he misjudged the depth of the kick, at around the 15' mark, where Attissogbe beats him to the ball in the air (but knocks on himself). And the other one was at the 2nd half restart, with the ball slipping through his fingers and eventually going into touch.

For all three Tests, the ABs kicked off in the first half and received the kick-off in the second. Interestingly, they weren't able to secure one of those 2nd half restarts (Test 1: Ioane knock on; Test 2: Holland error; Test 3: Villière beats Tuipulotu to the ball). It was a consistent aspect of the pressure the ABs put themselves under at the beginning of the 2nd half, giving the French easy 22 access, alongside the quick impact of the French bench forwards who would come on around the same time.

@brodean said in 2025 All Blacks v France series:

Unfortunately restart receipts were an issue last year too and targeted by other teams. Something we haven't seem to have progressed with.

It’s a very competitive area between teams at the moment. With the new laws preventing teams from blocking chasers, you’re basically receiving the ball and chasers at the same time. Front-lifters like Vaa’i and Finau also need to make sure they’re not accidentally blocking oncoming opposition players as well.

It’ll probably take a while for teams to adapt. The ABs aren’t alone in this, the French weren’t much better at the kick-off receipt throughout the series either, losing multiple restarts as well. But having athletic 2m+ players certainly helps in this regard.

Now that the July series against the French is over, plenty of commentators are wondering what exactly can be taken away from the games, the French opposition being both inexperienced at Test level and overcooked from their long Top14 season. But not every aspect of play requires 100 Test caps nor a well-rested body to pressure the opposition: kick-off receipt only requires an excellent opposition kicker (check) and a coaching staff that is tactically astute (double check). And there’s plenty to unpack in that regard from these three Tests.

What is a successful kick reception?
But first, it might be interesting to quickly clarify what I understand kick reception to be about. Here, I’ll mostly be focusing on kick restart wins and losses. What do I consider to be a restart win? The kick receiver – who has been given a zone where he’s responsible for calling and making the catch, whether it’s near the 10 metre line, around the 22 or inside the 22 – takes possession from the restart, cleanly, and allows his team to set up an exit play.

The taking the ball cleanly matters. The ABs might end up with possession after the restart but only due to an opposition mistake (e.g. a knock-on). But I don’t consider that as a restart win per se since the planned reception failed. Here’s an example: Segonds kicks a restart after the first NZ try in Wellington which Holland misjudges, allowing Attissogbe to beat him to the space. The latter, however, knocks the ball on and the ball ends up in the hands of Lio-Willie.

While the ABs technically end up with possession after the restart, I do not consider this to be a restart win, since Holland was unable to properly judge the kick and get into the required position to make a clean kick receipt.

Then again, players can also immediately lose the ball after winning the restart. In the same Test, Holland catches a restart cleanly in the 55th minute, only for him to make a run and cough the ball up rather cheaply.

Still, that is a restart win in my books. The only thing that matters, in other words, is the moment of reception itself, not the eventual outcome of the passage of play. Others will have different definitions of course, with a site like RugbyPass coming to different numbers on both total restarts (e.g. 7 rather than 5 in the third Test) and win percentage (RP: 86, 78 and 73% across the Tests respectively, versus 80, 62 and 40% by my own count in the table below). I’m not quite sure how they got to those numbers but I’ll leave that aside.

Some numbers and a graph
As mentioned above, testing a team’s kick-off receipt only requires a solid boot and some tactical nous. Unsurprisingly then, the French restart kickers, Joris Segonds and Antoine Hastoy, were able to thoroughly test the AB kick-off receivers throughout the July series, putting more and more pressure on the different units across the field as the series wore on.

After first kicking exclusively to the AB left-wing reception zone (Vaa’i – Holland – Ioane) during the first two Tests (13 restart kicks, of which 9 were effectively dealt with), the French switched it around completely and exclusively targeted the ABs’ right hand side in Hamilton (Finau – Tuipulotu – Jordan) to good effect, Hastoy forcing the ABs into a paltry 40% retention rate in that final Test.

The All Blacks’ reception retention rate got lower and lower through the series, as the French were able to manipulate and consistently take the NZ backfield coverage by surprise. One reason for this is that most of the French restarts went deep but when they went shorter, they were very successful, with the ABs only catching 1 out of 5 French restarts between the 22 and the 10 metre line.

So what were the French trying to do with their restarts? Why did they mainly kick deep (10/13) when their short restarts were such a success? And what exactly went wrong for the ABs in this department throughout the series?

French tactics
The standard French restart tactic at the beginning of the Test series was to kick long, inside the AB 22, and close to the touch line. With an inexperienced Holland responsible for high ball receipts and a non-kicker in Ioane responsible for taking the ball in the 22, it allowed the French to chop down the AB kick receiver quickly and immediately pressure the NZ breakdown, looking to force them into mistakes and/or turnovers near their own try line.

It fitted within a broader French strategy of pressuring the ABs in their own half, as they looked to fracture NZ confidence while steadily building scoreboard pressure and momentum through the accuracy of their kickers, Le Garrec and Segonds.

Another benefit to this tactic of kicking deep was that, when they did go short, it often caused chaos among the AB kick receivers, who weren’t expecting this change of depth. It looks like the French wanted to challenge some of the less familiar combinations within the ABs, such as those between Vaa’i and Holland in the first two Tests, and Finau and Tuipulotu in the third.

Exploiting frail combinations
The ABs use their taller, athletic back-rowers such as Finau and Vaa’i to patrol the area just beyond the 10 metre line, their coordination and jumping ability valuable commodities for potential contests in that area. But they have a double role: when the ball is kicked to near the AB 22, they are to function as the front lifters for locks like Holland and Tuipulotu. The complexity of this dual role formed the crowbar with which the French kickers wanted to break open the connection between the AB kick-off receivers.

In the Wellington Test, for example, Vaa’i was caught off guard when Segonds decides to go for a more shallow kick instead of the more typical deep kick. The former had already turned his back to the ball in order to lift Holland, only for Vaa’i to have to turn back once again in an attempt at catching the ball in his marked zone.

It was more of the same in Hamilton, as the partnership of Finau and Tuipulotu was put to the sword by Hastoy’s accurate boot, as the latter tried to find the space between the two in order to make the timing and lift as challenging as possible.

In both cases where Tuipulotu loses the aerial contest to Gabin Villière, the lifting pod between Finau, Tuipulotu and Lomax is slow to form and tentative in its positioning. Tuipulotu needs to attack the ball and be quicker in claiming the space where he wants to be lifted.

Potential fixes?
It’s clear that the AB coaching staff is aware that the restart was becoming a real issue during the series. Even during the Hamilton game itself, the coaches tried to fix the problem, with Holland being put on the right hand side after Tuipulotu was unable to gather the ball off the restart two times in a row.

Jordan gathers the ball inside the 22 but Holland (number 5) is now where Tuipulotu had been in order to catch the restart

It’s an impressive feat for a 2.5-Test rookie to be asked to problem-solve in his debut series. But in the previous games, Holland had shown himself to be the most reliable option in these contestable scenarios, despite having multiple fumbles himself.

Beyond simply putting Holland at where the opposition is kicking towards, the AB coaches will do well to make sure that the combinations within the different backfield coverage-units are settled and familiar with each other. The probable return of a player like Barrett, who has built up a mutual understanding with someone like Vaa’i, would certainly help in this regard. But the players themselves will also need to show more tactical nous on the field itself, where they need to show more awareness of the potential restart strategies being employed by the opposition.

Summary or, TL;DR
While the July internationals against an inexperienced yet talented French squad cannot teach us much about the state of the AB attack, defence or set-piece, what it can show is the state of the restart reception, due to the quality of both the French kicking and tactical coaching.

In that sense, this series has shown two clear-cut things. First, the ABs have demonstrated some frailties in their kick-off reception, the inexperienced combinations between lifters and receivers able to be exploited by a clever and accurate French kicking game. And secondly, the coaches have been very quick with the faith they’ve put in the young Dutchman Fabian Holland, asking him to help fix a failing kick-off reception in Hamilton. Then again, this faith has been earned through his performances in the series, where he’s shown himself to be the most reliable option for restart receptions.

The RugbyPass team of the World Rugby U20 Championship

Seven champion Junior Boks and one ferocious Georgian are selected in RugbyPass' pick of the ultimate talent in the age-grade game.

RugbyPass put together a team of the tournament with, unsurprisingly, a considerable number of Junior Boks (6: Mnebelele, Norton, Pead, Moyo, Williams and Jooste). There were also two NZ U20 players chosen: Wiseman at inside centre and Vakasiuola at lock.

It’s good to see Wiseman recognized for his efforts, as I thought he had a great tournament. He’s a smart player who typically makes those around him better. He’s also still eligible for next year’s U20 campaign. With a bit more muscle to his frame, he could be really effective in his style of play, I think.

Vakasiuola, I thought, was a bit out of left field as a selection for team of the tournament, especially as he only started the one game (Georgia, Rd. 2) and played only a total of 160 minutes across the tournament. He did well in his time on the field but still, a bit of a strange one. The writer (Jamie Lyall) didn’t seem to want to pick two lighter locks – with Riley Norton already at 4 – but I think Xavier Treacy definitely deserved more than a mention for all of his efforts throughout the tournament. Jayden Sa was also immense in the knock-out games against France and South Africa.

Vaenuku was perhaps a bit unlucky not to be selected at 14 but Cheswill Jooste was also really good throughout the tournament. Letiu had, quietly, a great World Cup as well. He's not as noticeable as someone like Oudenryn but if you see where he pops up on the field, it shows that Letiu has an incredible work rate. The biggest compliment I can give him is that he reminded me of Codie Taylor, just everywhere on the field.