Beating the All Blacks is one thing.
A few teams have done it over the last few years and that doesn’t automatically turn them into that elusive beast known as World Beaters. Since the World Cup final in 2015, only four sides have beaten the All Blacks.
The Lions won the second test in Wellington back in 2017 by 3 points. Australia won in Suncorp by 5 points later that year. South Africa beat the All Blacks in September of this year (2018) by 2 points in Wellington. Ireland, in 2016 and earlier this month beat the All Blacks by 11 points and 7 points respectively.
Five games and five losses to four teams. I’m tempted to remove the Lions from that conversation just because the All Blacks won’t play them again for another 12 years so, when we look at the sides that they are likely to face in the next year, they’ve lost to three teams with Ireland having the first and second largest margin of victory and the most comfortable performance. The All Blacks don’t lose very often so any win over them has to be viewed as a yardstick moment for any potential contender and the minutiae of each loss becomes significant.
Each loss – and the manner of it – tells us a fair bit about a potential crack in the mighty All Black facade. It’s been said quite a bit in the interim that this loss against Ireland will be “the best thing for the All Blacks” in the build to the World Cup but I don’t quite agree with that. Yes, when it comes to adapting to defeats, the All Blacks are about as good as anyone but structural and systemic weaknesses don’t disappear overnight. If your scrum, for example, is a weakness, you can change out players or coaches but it won’t – as a general rule – become a massive strength overnight. The game just doesn’t work like that.
The biggest exploitable weakness, if you can call it that, in the All Blacks structure at the moment is the way they structure their defence as a means of generating transition opportunities.
Defend To Attack
I’d be comfortable in saying that the All Blacks don’t really have any massive ball carriers in the mould of a CJ Stander, Billy Vunipola, Robert Du Preez, Tadhg Furlong or Malcolm Marx. That isn’t to say that Brodie Retallik, Owen Franks, Ardie Savea or Liam Squire (in particular) couldn’t run you over on any given phase but that kind of big ball-carrying power isn’t something that the All Blacks rely on. Mainly because they don’t need to – the All Blacks’ forwards’ skill set is the best on the planet in both their handling ability, support line running and technical excellence in the contact area from everything to their footwork prior to contact, to their ball security to their ball presentation is world class. As you’d expect. They might not run over you the way Billy Vunipola might do, or be anything like “soft” when it comes to carrying the ball hard inside the red zone, but all of the Kiwi forwards are really good at finding a weak shoulder, protecting the ball in contact with an offload option and providing a good shape on the floor to help their usually ruthless clean out support.
With that kind of skill set – and with the most amount of raw talent in the outside backs in the game right now – it makes sense for the All Blacks to play a game that plays to the strengths of their pack, their half-backs and their back three. That means playing hard towards attacking defensive transition points.
Their defensive system is set up to really capitalize on these transitions, whether they happen in contact or through kick aways. That means they play with a modified 13 up/2 back defensive system that can shift to a 12 up/3 back or 11 up/4 back system if the circumstance warrants it. The only kink in that system is Aaron Smith or TJ Perenara who, while technically part of the front line of the defence, often act as ruck point cover.
Ireland, for example, play with the scrumhalf in defensive line – usually, it’s Murray but Marmion did a good job of covering that role – and that allows Ireland to play with more numbers in the line as a result. New Zealand don’t do that. Maybe they don’t want Smith – who’s 1.69m and pretty slight by modern day standards – taking too much heavy traffic or allowing him to be an offensive target for the opposition that might crack their structure at whatever point in the line he ends up defending but Smith only really enters the defensive line properly when New Zealand are compressed back into their own 22.
That kink in their defensive system means they align like this in defence.
That necessity for Smith to defend in the layer behind the defence puts a lot of pressure on the front line defence as far as front up tackling and defensive decision making goes.
The wingers in this system do a lot of movement based on the situation. If the play moves to the left of the field, the opposite winger folds back and vice versa. Most teams do this to some degree but a lot of New Zealand’s counter-attacking transition work is based on having these guys available in the backfield. Barrett and the fullback are usually stationed in the backfield and are really good at linking with each other and the dropped back winger when the ball is kicked back to them.
You can see that system working with Ben Smith dropping back in on this kick transition. Watch the screen left edge defender (B. Smith) drop into the backfield as the kick goes up.
This is the New Zealand system in effect.
They mainly defend with 11 players in the front line, Smith in the second layer and with three players in the backfield – Barrett and McKenzie as the two bankers and Smith or Ioane floating back as needed. Here’s an example of their primary line with Smith stepping into the line due to the proximity of the defensive ruck to his side of the field.
With this knowledge, we know that the biggest danger to the New Zealand defensive system is being unbalanced in their relatively narrow defensive line.
How does a line get unbalanced?
You unbalance a narrow defensive line by varying the points at which you strike it. Mix that variance in ruck point with strong ball carrying and the threat of live ball carrying and you have a combination that can stress the All Blacks defensive system.
The first thing we have to look at is ball-carrying threats and how you establish them. A lot of this will be done in the video room. The All Blacks are meticulous in their video preparation and pay close attention to who the opposition’s primary ball carriers are. This is particularly important to New Zealand because of the narrow nature of their defensive line. They’ll have noted Tadhg Furlong, James Ryan and CJ Stander as Ireland’s primary forward threats in the “hammer zone“. It was up to Ireland to confirm that analysis early and often.
Ireland started at this straight away. Look at this All Black alignment after they kicked the ball away inside the first minute.
Five All Black front-line defenders are clustered in the right side of the field. That immediately creates a target for Ireland to “hammer”.
We want to see CJ Stander, one of our primary guys, hammer that space close to the fringe and really dominate the collision to set the ruck point and show New Zealand that they need to focus on him.
That carry off the transition ruck allows Ireland to begin to manipulate the New Zealand front-line defence.
We don’t want to continue to the openside here because this is too predictable. When a defence is narrow, you want to make them narrower still to get them worrying about ball-carrying threats and their position in the defensive line.
Ireland went back to the short side after Stander’s carry to Aki and that drew more All Black defenders to one side of the pitch.
The next phase saw Ireland go to Stander again in the same position, with the same target. The All Blacks got good line speed – something they’re very, very good at in this system – but Stander still managed to get a dominant shot on Squire man to man.
Look at the options directly after Stander’s carry with SIX All Black defenders left on the short side.
Look how that numbers imbalance creates a tricky situation further out for the All Black defensive system. Owen Franks is defending a lot of space at C, and Ireland’s stacked pods are assessing the All Black response to just one powerful Stander carry that wins the collision.
It isn’t about blowing the All Blacks out of the way, it’s about soaking their line speed and assessing how they fold at that point in the line. Just one carry created the following defensive decision points (in pink) for the All Blacks.
Ireland didn’t use them on this occasion – we kicked on the next phase – but the response will have been noted by Sexton, Kearney, Ringrose and Aki.
If Ireland could get their threats onto the ball, they could unbalance the All Blacks defence and play around those points.
The narrower a defensive line is – and the fewer people in it – the more it gets punished by decoys and getting stretched at the farthest point from the last ruck. Getting the ruck point here is the key to stressing the All Blacks on phase play. They won’t tire in the same way that other teams do on multi-phase possessions but getting a ruck point will force them to move in predictable ways from there out and, as we’ve seen, they will match like-for-like in open field on Ireland’s heavy carrying pods.
Watch this pullback pass from Furlong and how it affects the New Zealand defensive pod tasked with hitting Furlong, Ryan and Van Der Flier;
It draws out FOUR All Blacks from the line in a defensive pod, who sit down on Furlong’s pass back to Sexton. That pass takes them out of the phase and when Sexton passes to Aki, it creates an isolation on the edge. Look at Stander’s pinch line that holds Franks in position and gives Aki a look at attacking three All Black defenders in space.
That allows Ireland to surge up the far wing and create a rally point for the All Blacks defence, who are already under pressure on this play.
Furlong’s pullback, and the four defenders it sat down coupled with Stander’s fix line, isolated 9 All Black defenders on the wrong side of the ball.
Ireland just have to make good distance on this carry to create a problem for the All Blacks. If we scored, fine, but all we really had to do here was to make good ground and force the All Blacks narrow line to chase position.
Peter O’Mahony’s carry made it to the halfway line but that enough to force a gappy realignment – again with Savea floating in the seam – that Ireland could attack after the reset.
Furlong draws Savea onto him, which allows Ryan to attack the space, get behind the All Blacks like and force Smith into a cover tackle. That defensive reset from the All Blacks creates a narrowing that Ireland will look back on with a bit of regret.
If Marmion and Sexton can get enough width on this ball, New Zealand’s narrow edge could be got at by the pod holding position in centre field.
When Sexton finds Best at the edge, there’s a split second when a pullback or a pop around the corner to Ringrose is on.
See how the width after the break and tight alignment on the other side of the pitch caused a potential isolation on the far edge? Look at Healy looking to close the door on the edge defender – he draws Squire’s line a small bit – and Toner’s subtle block line on the covering defenders. Ireland are setting up the isolation for Ringrose and Earls on Ioane. If Ringrose picked this ball off Best – and what a pass it was by Sexton to get it there in the first place – then he’d skin Squire alive in that much space with Earls offering support out wide. At some point, McKenzie or Barrett would enter the fray in the backfield but they’d do so at the kind of pace that means any mistake is a clean try under the posts.
