The All Blacks would have preferred Japan.
Don’t believe the hype when Steve Hansen tells you that he’s glad to have avoided Japan. It’s the kind of garbage that should be unbecoming of a guy in Hansen’s position but here we are. It won’t matter if New Zealand wins on Saturday, of course, because Hansen will be “right” again. One of the benefits of coaching the best team in World Rugby over the last 10 years is that you can pretty much say whatever you like before games and it’s all washed away when you win. The All Blacks players are so good they end up cashing the cheques that the coach’s mouth never could – usually anyway.
So here we are. Ireland vs the All Blacks. Four years of squad building and system building lead to Tokyo, 2019. In previous cycles, playing the All Blacks would almost be a death knell, of sorts. To go from never having beaten them in 100 odd years to beating them in a knockout game at the World Cup? It would have been a big ask.
This time around? We’ve two wins out of the last three games against the All Blacks. We’re just under a year removed from a classic Big Fat Win with both sides fully loaded. There’s no reason whatsoever that Ireland should not beat the All Blacks this Saturday, bar that they are just better than us on the day. There should be no hang-ups. No hoodoos. Just two teams going bone on bone for 80 minutes to decide who goes through and who goes home.
This is senior hurling now, lads.
If Ireland are to progress beyond the All Blacks this weekend, we’ll have to go as deep and as dark as they will to get the job done. At the breakdown, in every collision, the All Blacks will remember the aftermath of 2018 and look to exact a physical tax on us. It happened in 2016 post-Chicago and it’ll happen here. We have to be ready to collect a tax of our own. The All Blacks know every trick in the book for getting your top guys off the field and they know that Nigel Owens – the ultimate “let it flow regardless” referee – will allow them that extra edge they’ll need to impose themselves here. It won’t be personal, it’s just business but it’ll look and feel very fucking personal in between the white lines, so we can’t afford to be carrying any shy boys.
That violent mindset is what sets the All Blacks apart, in a lot of ways. They will be hurting after November 2018. They will want to make an example of us. We are their launchpad for the knockouts. They will do anything to win. Will we? I suppose we’ll see.
Spotting The Traps
Is Bill Belichick the most examined minds in contact sports. One of his best abilities is his tendency to “self-scout” and deploy misdirection during games to throw off the analysts from future opponents. If the Patriots had a healthy lead heading into a third or fourth quarter, Belichick would often call for unusual play calls in certain positions to skew the numbers for watching opponents. “What do the Patriots tend to do on 3rd down in their own half?” becomes a more difficult question when you realise that the information you’re looking at has been skewed, deliberately, by the Patriots themselves.
Rugby is the same during the World Cup because of the “weak” teams you always have in your pool. It gives you scope to “self-scout” in certain games where you deviate a little from your A game and not show all that much or, if you’re feeling fancy, throw in a few things that throw off the opponents ability to study areas like the lineout or off the scrum. When Steve Hansen referenced that he was leaving “traps” for Joe Schmidt earlier this week, I presume he was referring to some of the unusual phase structures and set-piece strikes they deployed early against Namibia and Canada. For me, there is little of value to be gleaned from either of those performances. Some of the “weaknesses” in their defensive alignments and Q2 exits against Namibia in the second half seemed a little too like the story of Brer Rabbit to me. Maybe I’m paranoid.
As such, I’ve only focused on the games that the All Blacks have decided as being “must-win” over the last 12 months – Ireland in 2018 and the opening game of their World Cup against South Africa. The games where there was the least amount of scope for anything other than winning games.
Edge Hitting and Blitzing
Back in September, I made a fist at predicting the All Blacks’ XV for this weekend’s game and one of the key parts of my thought process was on how they would stack their midfield. After watching our game against the All Blacks back a few times, the All Blacks consistently missed a big physical outlet on their edge plays when they couldn’t find Ardie Savea. Hansen left out Ryan Crotty – a key defensive organiser – for the more dynamic and physical pairing of Jack Goodhue and Anton Lienert-Brown with Sonny Bill Williams on the bench, and given how our game went in 2018, I can understand it.
Have a look at the number of ruck decisions that the All Blacks had to make in the Irish 22 back in November.
New Zealand Ruck Trends VS Ireland 2018
| Position Context | Play Off Nine | Kick Off Nine | Play Off Nine Xpanded | Play Off 10 | Kick Off 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| Q2 | 17 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 3 |
| Q3 | 31 | 0 | 5 | 24 | 4 |
| Q4 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
There’s a big drop off between the number of rucks the All Blacks had in Q3 and the number of rucks they had in Q4. What does this show us? That the All Blacks were able to generate field position in Q3 but were mostly unable to convert those positions into entries into the Irish 22 – Q4.
When we look at the All Blacks/Springboks game in Pool B opener, we see a similar trend.
New Zealand Ruck Trends VS Springboks 2019
| Position Context | Play Off Nine | Kick Off Nine | Play Off Nine Xpanded | Play Off 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 4 |
| Q2 | 7 | 10 | 3 | 18 |
| Q3 | 9 | 0 | 4 | 7 |
| Q4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Eight ruck points in the Springbok 22? In both games – Springboks and Ireland 2018 – the All Blacks had Crotty at #12, with a more athletic “hitter” outside him at #13. That was Jack Goodhue in November 2018 and Anton Lienert-Brown in the first game of Pool B against South Africa.
By the World Cup Pool Stages, New Zealand had already begun to transition away from Ben Smith as a staple of their back three in favour of the more dynamic Sevu Reece. That trade-off – experience and playmaking hands dropped for power and hard running – is something that the All Blacks needed to do and it’s been a consistent issue for them against top-ranked opposition.
If you’re having issues converting a lot of Q3 possession – and the All Blacks have been struggling in that facet regardless of whether they play off 9 or use their twin playmakers – then you need guys who can narrow the opposition defence. There isn’t much they can do in the pack, bar starting Ardie Savea and Cane in the same back row to get Savea’s dynamism with the ball in hand on the pitch at the expense of, for example, their lineout variety.
Look at any poor All Blacks performance over the last 18 months and those issues against top-end blitz defences show up again and again. The All Blacks use a lot of hands off #10 in Q2 and Q3 but if they don’t have enough hitters in the wider areas, the opposition can end up blitzing their centre-field possessions and forcing the kind of errors we saw against South Africa multiple times in the last 12 months and, notably, against Ireland in 2018.
On the other wing, George Bridge seems to have completely outstripped Reiko Ioane as Hansen has settled on Mo’unga and Barrett as his primary #10 and #15.
George Bridge – comfortable at fullback, which helps balance out their alignment with Barrett taking a more advanced role in transition – seems to me to be more of a defensive slot-in to the All Blacks backfield as Hansen has tried to balance his coverage. Ben Smith, his usual “balance player” seems to have aged out of the top level of test rugby overnight, and his positional intelligence and link play isn’t enough to warrant selection when the All Blacks need bigger, more athletic runners. Bridge, for me, is a better all-rounder than Ioane but not as powerful with the ball in hand. He’s not as dangerous a strike runner as Ioane – few are – but Bridge better under the high ball, better positionally and more intelligent with his running lines for my money.
By dropping Crotty and Smith, Hansen has told us where he felt he fell down against us in 2018 and against the Springboks earlier in the tournament.
One thing you’ll notice from looking at those ruck decisions against Ireland in 2018 is the amount of kicking done in Q3 by the All Blacks.
What do you notice about the majority of these kicks?
They’re all kicked from central positions off centre-field ruck position with a distinct onfield target – in behind the advance of Stockdale into the primary defensive line. The All Blacks seemed to go after Stockdale specifically quite a bit in 2018, and I’d imagine they’ll look to go after him similarly here.
I think we’ll back ourselves to manage the All Blacks in Q2 and Q3 as we did in 2018. The All Blacks extra hitters in midfield will cause us issues but losing Crotty will hurt their ability to “stitch the space” between pods when the All Blacks attack on transition and their wider rucking will drop off a small bit – an area for Ireland to target through the likes of Earls, O’Mahony and Van Der Flier. Losing Crotty will levy slightly more ball playing responsibility on Barrett and Mo’unga but both will have more hitting options to work with, in Lienert-Brown, Goodhue and Reece.
Twin Playmakers
Ireland already faced New Zealand with twin playmakers. Barrett and McKenzie started at #10 and #15 in 2018 and transitioned to the spine of the backline that we’ll face here in the second half. New Zealand finished 2018’s game with Mo’unga at #10, Barrett at #15 and Lienert-Brown/Goodhue in midfield.
In practicality, playing with two 10s increases the width of the attack that you have to defend. This style of attack is used by “smaller” teams who want to leverage their handling ability to play around opponents heavy inside defence.
Here’s a good example of how that works, specifically with Barrett as the second pair of hands in a big openside play.
Against South Africa, Barrett carried the ball 17 times and passed the ball 14 times with most of those possessions coming in edge spaces at the end of one or two All Black passes. Barrett in possession here;
Creates the kind of wide 3-2/4-3 isolations that the All Blacks will want on their phase play for this game. Barrett is the key. The wide pass from Smith to McKenzie (it’ll be Mo’unga in this one) chopped out a lot of the Irish heavy defence and caused our winger to move “up”.
That creates the space that the All Blacks want to attack, behind the blitz and outside the covering fullback. The selection of Reece and Lienert-Brown enables the All Blacks to pursue this space more aggressively and without the need to kick the ball away as often which, even when you’re as good as Barrett, is something of a lottery.
The presence of Jordi Barrett on the bench hints at a more aggressive kicking game as the game progresses.
Without Crotty, I’d expect Barrett to carry the ball slightly less often. The main benefit to having twin playmakers at #10 and #15 is that you can get the ball to wider numbers more accurately, so look for Barrett searching for a pod of Savea, Reece and Lienert-Brown to try and “swarm” the wing defended by Ringrose and Earls. The All Blacks don’t like carrying the ball off #9 against Ireland because there aren’t many one on one collisions they could be confident of winning there. Where the All Blacks have an advantage is in the dynamic wide carrying of Savea. I’d expect the All Blacks to mainly structure their possessions in the middle of the field off #9 with Taylor, Whitelock and Read with Cane and Retallick in ruck support. Lienert-Brown will carry a lot of “release” balls off their #9 carries.
Opportunities
But playing two flyhalves comes with a cost to your defence. There have been questions raised about Barrett’s ability under the high ball but I think it’s an overrated weak spot. The real area of advantage is targeting Barrett under slightly longer high balls – ostensibly transition balls – but targeting him on the catch for heavy tackles, rather than contesting in the air. Ringrose, Earls and Stockdale will have a real job here. We don’t want to kick to contest, I think we want to kick to hit. Reduce Barrett’s effectiveness by targeting him for the likes of Stockdale, Earls and Ringrose to hit.
I’ve also noticed a tendency for their tighthead prop, Nepo Laulala, to go to sleep around the side of rucks. Look for Ireland to go after New Zealand in the middle of the field in this manner;
We’re going to be targeting Laulala, Moody or Read as they come across the field. We’ll look to disguise this with a big forward pod of Furlong/Ryan to draw the All Blacks centre-field defenders across from the previous ruck.
A lot has been made of how Ireland will approach this game and, to be honest, I think if we’re playing well we’ll look a lot like we did in 2018.
Ireland Ruck Trends VS New Zealand 2018
| Position Context | Play Off Nine | Kick Off Nine | Play Off Nine Xpanded | Play Off 10 | Kick Off 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Q2 | 18 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| Q3 | 18 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 2 |
| Q4 | 21 | 0 | 5 | 14 | 0 |
We used our big carriers to set the table for Sexton to find Ringrose/Aki (it’ll be Henshaw here) around the edges of the unbalanced All Black primary line.
The All Blacks have to respect our narrow carriers and if they have a big game – Furlong, Ryan, Henderson, Healy, Stander – then the table will be set for Murray and Sexton to bring our midfield and backfield runners into play.
It will not be easy. We will need to be faultless and manage how and where we kick the ball away to All Blacks (which we’ll have to do). If we play to our best, we can beat the All Blacks without them having to have a bad game. There’s no reason why we can’t do it. Our scrum is better, we can target their lineout jumpers (Read, especially) and if we approach this game with the edge we need at the breakdown – nuke everything with a black shirt and a heartbeat, essentially – then we can do the business here.
Let’s fucking do this.
