Former All Blacks Mils Muliaina and Stephen Donald have told Scott Robertson to focus on the here and now rather than building towards the Rugby World Cup.
New Zealand head into the 2025 Test season following a mixed first year under the head coach, who replaced Ian Foster after the 2023 global tournament.
Robertson was dealt a tough hand given the departures of some genuine greats, but he still had a very experienced squad to work with.
In fact, he received criticism for perhaps placing too much trust in the old guard and not being braver with his selections, something he accepted recently.
However, Muliaina has warned the All Blacks boss about going too far the other way with results absolutely paramount in 2025.
Development and winning
On The Breakdown, Jeff Wilson posed the question: “We can win now and develop players, surely?”
Muliaina was the first to respond and believes that following a challenging 2024, Robertson needs to prioritise victories over development.
“If you’re the coaching staff off the back of last year, you need to win now. He had to build good relationships and one of those was getting a clear pathway between him and his captain,” he said.
“This year, the Test series against France is probably the most important Test series for Razor because he’s got to win.
“I don’t think you bring those [young] guys in to play those games. There might be an opportunity if we’ve won the first two – that’s when you start someone like your third half-back.
“Then you start blooding guys in, but then you’ve got a Bledisloe Cup and a Rugby Championship. We’ve got to win, we’ve got to get back to winning.”
Muliaina is positive ahead of the All Blacks’ Test season, however, and believes that they have the ability to play in a variety of ways.
“When you look at Super Rugby, it gives me confidence that we’ve adapted, but we’ve also got different styles,” he added.
“We can go a little bit wider, we’ve got the athletes to go a little bit wider, but we can also roll our sleeves up and be a little bit physical in the close quarters.”
Preparing for the World Cups
All the top sides are in a similar situation by having one eye on the Rugby World Cup and making sure they are in a position to challenge for the 2027 tournament.
That is also the case for Robertson, who knows that he won’t have the same group of players for the World Cup in Australia.
The All Blacks head coach therefore has to find and develop some younger individuals, but Donald does not believe it has to be right now.
“Can you go too early on a World Cup? The Springboks winning in 2019, they lost by 100 in Albany pretty much and they were trying to play like the All Blacks, but they said: ‘Na, that’s not for us, let’s go back to how we used to play’,” the 2011 World Cup hero said.
“It was structure, box-kicking and they won a World Cup from it 18 months later, so you can go too early.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/all-blacks-great-france-series-the-most-important-for-scott-robertson-after-what-happened-last-year
