Robinson takes the position knowing that in his own country, the game is just clinging on, as Aussie Rules and league become even more dominant. So he has every incentive to push for rules and attitudes that would make rugby more exciting.
I say “might be great” because the unknown with Robinson is how good he’ll be at negotiating the rats’ nest that is the boardroom at World Rugby.
Let’s take the optimistic view, and hope the support that got him to his current position will hold when he challenges the dreary northern attitudes to style and rules, that currently favour teams relying on brute force and goalkicking.
They all know the ropes, now
In a strikingly honest interview with Gregor Paul, All Blacks coach Scott Robertson opened up on an early information overload problem with the squad.
“You become rugby-heavy at the start, naturally, because people are learning new calls, new structures, so that is where the focus goes to. We have balanced out through the season.”
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Mental exhaustion, which surely played a part in the loss to France in Paris, and in the lacklustre effort against Italy, shouldn’t be an issue in 2025.
A major difference between Super and international rugby is the luxury of time afforded Super coaches (where preparation starts 11 weeks before the competition begins in February), compared to the breakneck two weeks between the Super Rugby Pacific final and the first England test this year.
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Robertson now knows the All Blacks players, and vice versa, so there should be a less intense run-in.
A huge stage
More than 100,000 tickets have already sold for next year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup in England.
It has the potential to be a magnificent promotion for the women’s game here too. But after the delight the Black Ferns provided with their Eden Park World Cup triumph in 2022, the Ferns’ results this year have been erratic.
The bright spot is that there’s no clash between the XVs Rugby World Cup and the Rugby World Cup Sevens, which will be held in 2026. Sevens superstars like Sarah Hirini and Portia Woodman bolstered the Ferns in 2022.
It’d be a surprise if some of our outstanding sevens players weren’t on board with the Ferns in England next year.
The return of the Blues
It’s 20 years since Vern Cotter managed to combine running a sheep farm with coaching Bay of Plenty to a Ranfurly Shield victory.
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But Stern Vern, so his Blues’ players indicate, was able to instil some of those old school, bedrock ideas of commitment, sacrifice and playing for the team, not for your own aggrandisement.
Which is pretty impressive, working with a group in Auckland unlikely to have ever used a docking elastrator on a lamb’s tail. The Blues of 2024 were hugely focused and there’s every reason to believe Cotter will produce a team that plays with similar intensity next year.
Where do the provinces go from here?
When New Zealand Rugby’s (NZR) new board has their first meeting, which apparently may not be until February of next year, a major priority must surely be to plot a way for provincial rugby.
And I’m not talking about another consultant group making hopeful recommendations for the future, but decisions to be acted on. When an Auckland team plays a competition provincial game at a school ground, with a crowd of less than 2000 people, as they did with Bay of Plenty this year, there’s a scary hint of NPC death throes.
If ever there was a time for visionaries at NZR, it’s now.
Super shifts too
A couple of weeks before the first Super Rugby game was played in 1996, I asked the man charged by the then NZRU with fitting the pieces together in New Zealand, the late Peter Thorburn, a question about the competition’s format.
He replied: “To be honest, I’m buggered if I know. We’re really making this up as we go along.” That brutally honest nutshell sums up the DNA of Super Rugby.
It was hastily dreamed up at the behest of broadcasters, not as an organic development from the grassroots. Kiwis initially loved it. Not so much now.
Between the ravages of Covid, and South Africa heading north, I’d suggest it’s another area for bright sky thinking by a new board.
No spark in this media firecracker
TJ Perenara’s message before he began the haka in Turin didn’t turn into a nationwide media and online firestorm.
Having lived through the “no politics in sport” era that brought us the 1981 Springbok Tour, I’m in the camp that thinks a reference to the Treaty of Waitangi is a miniscule issue when compared to 1981’s baton charges and an upturned police car outside Eden Park.
In 1999, talkback lines almost burned out with outrage over Hinewehi Mohi singing the anthem in Māori before the All Blacks played England at Twickenham in that year’s World Cup.
But life as we know it didn’t end, and it would be a very strange Kiwi today who didn’t feel at ease with the bilingual version now used before every test.
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