Murray Mexted believes that the All Blacks are currently being hampered by their playing pool as they look to put a mixed 2024 behind them later this year.
In Scott Robertson’s first campaign in charge, New Zealand won nine of their 13 Tests as they surrendered the Rugby Championship title for the first time since 2019.
They enjoyed a positive end to the year, however, as Robertson’s men picked up victories over England and Ireland in the Autumn Nations Series, and only lost to France by a point.
Remarkable rankings statistic
The All Blacks are certainly not the all-conquering force they were under Sir Graham Henry and Sir Steve Hansen, though, and have not topped the World Rugby rankings over the past few years.
Robertson and his team will be looking to change that in 2025, but Mexted is worried about the class of player they are producing at the moment.
“We definitely need world-class players and that’s one of the things we’ve battled with in terms of our number of options and who’s available for selection,” he told DSPN with Martin Devlin.
“New Zealand Rugby, I don’t even know what the playing numbers are at the moment, but it won’t be 100,000, it would be a lot less than that these days.
“Your options aren’t as great so you have to have a very good team to perform at the level we expect the All Blacks to perform at. When you’re playing the best, you’ve got to have world-class players in key positions.”
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Mexted particularly highlighted their need to keep hold of the ball for longer and to be able to win it back, with other teams sometimes managing to have joy at set-piece and breakdown against the All Blacks.
“One of those positions is possession. If you analyse any Test match, when the top two teams are playing or the top three or four teams are playing, the team that wins the ball is invariably going to win that game,” he said.
“We need world-class players who can win possession and so that we can win at least our share of the ball.”
Who the All Blacks can learn from
The ex-All Blacks number eight also reckons that finding those quality individuals for the set-up is not the only obstacle for Robertson.
Mexted insists that getting them to gel is another requirement and he used Moana Pasifika’s improvement to demonstrate what can be achieved by having the right leaders.
“A good team will beat a team of good players. They (Moana) may not have the best players in the competition but they’re developing into a really good team and they’re going to be hard to beat,” he added.
“When you’ve got a great leader off the field like Tana [Umaga] and you’ve got a great leader on the field like Ardie [Savea], you’re going to be a hard team to beat, even though they haven’t got the great players or as many of them.”
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Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/all-blacks-great-claims-scott-robertson-battling-to-find-world-class-players
