The All Blacks are a team built on ideals.

No, not No Dickheads, because that was never enforced and certainly isn’t at the moment. Unless “dickhead” means something different down in New Zealand. When I talk about ideals, I’m talking about the idea of the All Blacks being “rugby” as far as most of the world is concerned. Ask any casual sports fan about rugby and one of the first things they’ll talk mention is the All Blacks, their Haka, and the black jerseys. Ask a casual rugby fan who the best player of all time is and they’ll talk about Dan Carter, Richie McCaw maybe, or Johah Lomu. All of them All Blacks, all of them legends of the New Zealand game.

That’s because The Mighty All Blacks™ have been the gold standard in rugby for more than a century and for the majority of the professional era the All Blacks were the ultimate – whether they are winning World Cups or not. You could argue that they’ve been the most dominant side on the planet from the emergence of the greatest All Blacks side of all time during the 2005 Lions until 2015. It took them until 2011 to win (another) home World Cup and, sure, there was the real feeling that the All Blacks were near perennial chokers at World Cups before that despite entering every single one as one of the favourites but, for me anyway, that great side of the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s was one of the best sides of all time in this game, arguably the best.

The 2011 side of Franks brothers, Mealamu, Woodcock, Thorn, Ali Williams, Whitelock, Kaino, McCaw, Read, Weepu, Carter, Nonu, Smith, Sonny Bill Williams, Dagg added in Dane Coles, Joe Moody, Brodie Retallick, Aaron Smith, Beauden Barrett, Ben Smith and Julian Savea to power to a dominant win on foreign soil in 2015.

Back-to-back World Champs. No one had done it before and perhaps never will again – although the Springboks will go close in 2023, I reckon – but it was a perfect example of getting a team over the line for a trophy and then augmenting that side with quality in the right areas, hanging onto the elite players right up to the end of their usefulness as an elite option and then transitioning on to the next player.

When the next player is also World Class, it looks easy.

It looks like a conveyor belt that will never end.

But the reality, even for the All Blacks, is that there’s no such thing as a limitless conveyor belt of elite talent because the game changes faster than player development cycles can react.

There’s more luck involved in player development than a lot of people would ever like to admit. Sometimes when you go looking the elite-level talent isn’t there or it was there and got injured before it could come to fruition or it was in a role set that wasn’t valued by the organisation at the time so never got scaled up.

I mean, if it was all about hard work and just looking off the beaten path a little bit more thoroughly, everyone would have a Jerome Kaino when they want one. But even the All Blacks are finding out that there was only one Jerome Kaino and replacing him isn’t as simple as chuckling “Next Man Up” into the mirror three times and waiting for the next elite talent.

Since the great All Blacks side of 05-15 aged out in the two seasons following the World Cup win, New Zealand have struggled to maintain the elite levels of succession that they saw between 2008 post defeat to France in 2007 and 2012 as they moved from being a very good side to an elite side and then a world-conquering one.

You can actually see that development when it comes to the number of losses the All Blacks shipped between World Cup cycles.

Between the 2007 World Cup quarter-final defeat to France and the 2011 World Cup final, the All Blacks played 55 games and lost 21.8% of them. That’s to be expected, somewhat, against a generationally good Springboks side – who they lost five times to between World Cups – but they were bedding in options like the aforementioned Jerome Kaino who missed the 2007 World Cup because of a hip injury, Victor Vito, Isaia Toeva, Cory Jane, Wyatt Crockett and Owen Franks.

Even then, they had prospects that didn’t work out like lock forward Isaac Ross, who had his lunch eaten by a young Sam Whitelock so it wasn’t a problem.

Between the 2011 and 2015 World Cup finals, the All Blacks played 54 games and only lost three of them. Three. That’s a loss percentage of just 5.5%. In 2012 during their home series against Ireland, the All Blacks debuted five new caps. You might have heard of them – Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith, Luke Romano, Sam Cane and Brodie Retallick. Romano didn’t top out as a world-class operator but the rest certainly were, for a time at least. Charles Faumuina made his debut that November.

Codie Taylor, Malakai Fekitoa, TJ Perenara and Waisake Naholo managed to sneak into the 2015 World Cup squad right at the end of the cycle and managed to have really productive careers. This four-year cycle is as close to perfect as you’ll see from a side at test level. They kept their elite old stagers going to the peak of their ability, stepped up apprentices from the previous cycle into starring roles and shot talented younger players straight into the squad almost as soon as they were ready.

They walked the World Cup that cycle, almost rightly so.

Between the 2015 World Cup final and the 2019 World Cup semi-final, the All Blacks played 53 games and lost seven of them, for a loss percentage of 13.2%. 

This was Beauden Barrett’s team now post-Carter and, with a Lions tour on the horizon mid-cycle, New Zealand had a distinct short-term focus to it. Keiran Read, the new captain, was a focal point in the new All Blacks’ back row with Cane stepping up to replace McCaw. Read was 32 at this stage, however, albeit with Ardie Savea – the first ever “apprentice” brought on tour with the All Blacks four years earlier as a 19-year-old – looking like he had potential. Jordi Barrett, an apprentice in 2016, was also selected in the squad to play the Lions alongside Damian McKenzie, who had made his debut against Argentina in the Rugby Championship a year before the series.

At this stage, however, the real problem was developing in the All Blacks front five. Scott Barrett, a top-class second row/half-lock, was something of an exception during the 2017 Lions tour. Ofa Tu’ungafasi, who was capped the previous summer against Wales, never hit the heights of the players who came before him despite a tonne of physical advantages. Coltman and Harris, the two hookers beneath Taylor and Coles, would never amount to much from a test perspective. Vaea Fifita, who was selected in the wider squad as a second row, would only get 11 caps for the All Blacks over the next three years and left for England in 2021 – he’ll be playing for the Scarlets this season in the URC.

When the World Cup came around, New Zealand could see they needed to make a change in their front five but felt that the changes were needed in the front row, the propping roster specifically. Nepo Lualala, who missed the Lions tour in 2017 because of a serious knee injury was dropped into the 2019 squad along with Ofa Tu’ungafasi and Angus Ta’avo, with Owen Franks a notable omission. It was seen as a statement selection of power and size over scrummaging smarts. Atu Moli, a high-potential young prop who was brought as an apprentice during the 2017 Rugby Championship, made the squad in 2019 as a loosehead but hasn’t made a wider impact since.

Patrick Tuipulotu, a tighthead lock build second row who was capped in 2014 with a big future, missed the 2015 World Cup win due to injury, missed the Lions tour in 2017 due to a skipped training session after a long spell out through injury, was rarely able to hit the heights suggested by his potential due to a litany of injuries. He played in the 2019 World Cup primarily as a bench option but hasn’t been able to push on since.

That’s been a common complaint about the All Blacks during this cycle and since, about more than just Patrick Tuipulotu.

In the time since the 2019 World Cup semi-final, the All Blacks have played 25 games and lost 8 of them. That’s a loss percentage of 32%.

By any metric, the All Blacks are degrading from their previous standards World Cup cycle to World Cup cycle. Some of that is to do with coaching, yes, as I’ll show in another article this week, but some of it is down to the players they have available to them too.

It’d be unfair to judge them at this stage when they are plainly trying out other options but even if we just look at the front five, there’s no real way to judge any player that makes a breakthrough from Super Rugby Pacific without the baseline test that the South African sides used to give them pre-2020 in the specific areas that will cost you at test level – tight defence, lineout, maul, scrummaging.

What we are seeing this year is what happens to every great rugby empire eventually.

The fall.

It doesn’t mean they can’t return to prominence, in fact, I would be shocked if they didn’t, but it’s a stark reminder that all any great team needs are three bad years of development (for the All Blacks that would be 2016-2019), a few prospects not panning out as they’d hoped through injury or other reasons and generational talents like Ma’a Nonu, Sonny Billy Williams, Kieran Read, Richie McCaw and others ageing out without being replaced quality for quality.