Holy shit, the All Blacks lost

The All Blacks went down to Ireland 40-29 yesterday in Chicago. Here’s why it’s actually the best thing that could’ve happened.

Although anything other than complete, serene domination from the All Blacks is distressing and kind of weird, we need to realise that northern tours are no longer just a formality to take care of before bicken back for the summer. Outside of New Zealand, the best coaching and most abrasive forward packs reside in the northern hemisphere. The coaches are all New Zealanders biding their time until the All Blacks job opens again, but still: these are games against teams that actually have some mana and coaches that aren’t completely cooked like Michael Chieka.

Ireland are a great team and they played the perfect game. So how did they do it?

They took game to New Zealand:

The most important thing Ireland did was try to actually play rugby against us. It’s just not possible anymore to beat the All Blacks by kicking penalties and grinding the game to a halt (a common northern hemisphere tactic). The Irish gameplan was to score more tries than us, which seems obvious, but not many attempt to do that these days. When it started to come off, it gave Ireland belief and put a ton of scoreboard pressure on the All Blacks. It’s something they haven’t had to deal with since the smuggest “rebuild” of all time began this season.

They did their homework:

In directing all kick offs to the middle of the park rather than at our locks, Ireland took our strong kick off reception out of the game and put Ben Smith at the bottom of a ruck, taking away a kicking option. This made gaining possession and exiting our half much harder than usual, meaning we spent a lot more time in our own half without the ball.

The Irish also took notice of how Argentina attacked around the fringes of the ruck and did the same. Taking advantage of how the All Blacks often commit less defenders to that area in favour of putting more numbers out wide, Conor Murray was able to step into a big gap to score a crucial try before halftime.

Ireland also revived a tactic they used in the 2011 World Cup, which was tackling high to both eliminate our offloading game and gain turnovers through creating mauls by holding players off the ground. This really stumped the All Blacks.

The All Blacks may have been too confident:

I wouldn’t say the All Blacks thought this game was won before it started, but they did look like a team going through the motions expecting to eventually win. Even after being dominated in the opening 25 minutes, they continued to take a carefree attacking approach which put them under more pressure when things like short attacking kicks in their own half and short kickoffs didn’t work. If you’re down by three tries early, maybe playing slightly more conservative and deep in the opposition half is a better approach just to gain parity.

Jerome Kaino was out of position:

I love Jerome Kaino so so much, but he is not a lock. I understand the All Blacks played him at that position to avoid fielding an inexperienced locking partnership after both Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock were ruled out with injury, but the first half was a throwback to a dark period in All Black rugby when winning lineouts were beyond them. They couldn’t get their hands on the ball the whole first half because they couldn’t win any lineouts! Scott Barrett is young but he would’ve been playing with his brother and alongside experienced guys like Kieran Read and Sam Cane. He needed to start. If the All Blacks could’ve won their own ball in the lineouts, things may have panned out differently. The selection of Kaino out of position indicated a bit of a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude that permeated throughout this entire performance.

Ill Discipline:

Joe Moody being sinbinned killed us. Ireland exploited it perfectly by using driving mauls immediately after he was sent to the bin. Discipline has become something of a weakness that opposing teams have started to try and exploit. The All Blacks need to be very wary of that going forward.

Also, a few key All Blacks just didn’t play that well:

Something is up with Aaron Smith, eh? Maybe he needs to take a long trip to a foreign land and find himself. Or maybe the media needs to stop reporting on his sexual exploits for weeks at a time. I don’t know. Either way he isn’t himself at the moment, and they need him to be because he is still the best halfback in rugby. Sam Cane and Ben Smith were pretty subdued also…

This is actually the best thing that could’ve happened:

This year has been really good for the All Blacks. Probably a little too good. Winning every game by 30 points while playing some of the most attractive rugby ever played has been real fun, but one nagging problem is that this new look team hasn’t had to learn how to win close games when nothing is going their way.

The thing that made the 2011-2015 All Blacks so good is that they finally figured out how to adapt within a game and be less predictable to the opposition. This came out of never wanting to repeat what happened against France that time in the 2007 World Cup when they got unexpectedly behind, then panicked and froze instead of just calmly adjusting their tactics.

That side reached their zenith in the 2015 World Cup by employing a varied gameplan that by design seemed to not follow any pattern. The logic being that a lesser team couldn’t compete by throwing everything at just one or two areas they knew the All Blacks would go to. They would chip kick one possession, pick and go the next, spread wide on one attack, then high kick the next. They mixed things up to the point that teams couldn’t as easily predict what they would do and therefore defend it well. They messed with their opponents heads early knowing it would lead to points later.

Seriously, some of the All Blacks games in last year’s World Cup were works of art. But this current squad doesn’t operate like that just yet. There is substance to the idea that the current team has actually gone to new heights because the experience that left the team has been replaced by younger, faster, more skilled players. But this team has only blown others off the park through sheer skill and speed, they haven’t had to outthink anyone until now. If this is the most skilled All Blacks team we’ve ever had, their predecessors were the most intelligent.

The good thing is that a team can only get to that Neo-level of enlightenment by losing games like this. It takes being dismantled to realise you’ve been relying too much on one aspect of the game. It also takes experience: this team is very young and they needed to lose to mature. This loss is good for the game in general and is great for the All Blacks in the long run.

This team will always be the most skilled on the park, which alone wins 80% of games. But if they build the street smarts that Dan and Richie’s version of the All Blacks had, then they’ll be close to unstoppable when it matters a few years from now.