Dan Sheehan tempers expectations of him despite eye-catching cameo

The club vs country situation, whereby clubs are in control of French players ahead of the FFR, is something I do not agree with. It is what it is though, it helps create this enormously successful league. Does make for a pretty lacklustre tour to NZ though, with France only picking 4 players who were part of the matchday 23 for the final weekend of the 6 Nations.

What it needs to do is not make dumb decisions. Even really look at who they are and what they mean. You take players like Bundee Aki leaving because NZR wanted SBW to return for another year. Crazy halfback depth can only really be blamed for JGP and TKB for leaving, but over thinking coaches can definitely be blamed for picking styles and players like George Bridge over James Lowe.

It’s obviously hard, as the biggest contribution to these areas/mistakes would have been fiscal matters I’d imagine, and they’re having to find the right balance if they want to continue to stay in a good place.

Obviously the visual enjoyment is a subjective matter, but really when you talk about a team like the All Blacks, their style was just so unique that it stood out to be cherished. So that is the picture I enjoy these days. More so what we saw at the beginning of this Super Rugby season, hectic, as apposed to the grinding end.

And in terms of the authors ‘fascination’, whether restore that aspect to their play would also restore their success is what would be most fascinating of all.

But that also goes for off field. They have done so much frustrating stuff over the last decade, like signing BB, that you just can’t accept what has happened, whether thats flowed into the AB results is besides the question.

Well, this constant painting of Foster as a victim is nauseating. It’s as if his 12 years as an ABs coach pre-2020 didn’t happen.

Keep it real bud.

I got to the answer to the question that was building at least..

This is what makes 2025 so fascinating: are New Zealand going to lower its expectations on what constitutes a fair return from the All Blacks, or will the old standard stay in place?

And is this really it? Did you make us read all (half) of that to be fascinated on whether.. what, fans say he should have stuck with experience like he did last year? You are one sick individual author.

I doubt you are going to get many answers though, their are a plethora of reasons why they were so bad during this period. All they have to do is fix them. Will it continue to be 93%? No, probably not. There, happy?

My fav reason you noted though;

If the All Blacks ever did have an inherent advantage – some ingrained rugby intelligence that they could tap into and keep innovating their game to stay ahead of the chasing pack – it seems like they no longer do.

This is exactly it. Over coaching no longer has the team playing rugby they way they grew up. They were awesome obviously because of how they played rugby. Theres no other possible answer unless you have some theory that somehow migrating long distances makes you genetically superior.

All they need to do to restore results is return to playing their version of rugby. How can we be so confident? Because theres another International team that took New Zealands style and turned it into a formular that the could train their players up with. Ireland. They are the ones that went to 90% win rate and now have plummeted back down after no longer playing like that anymore.

Now, what’s fascinating is what the new % will be and what are other micro factors that can help increase it. First, I don’t think it’s healthy (it seems to be thriving now as you say) if they continue at 90, 80 would be a respectable now. Second, U85 rugby is having that growth mentioned, and this is the perfect environment to be trying to involve people from Asia and South America in. Bill it up, bring it to Universities, use them for the 7s programme. Some, hopefully like Ollie Mathis, might want to try and bring their game to the open division, and help get that All Blacks record chugging.

Argentina at home is no longer a banana peel as evidenced by their wins against all the top nations and being regular semi-finalists. England Ireland France and SA all tough teams and Scotland great on their day. Aussie loom as a banana peel this year for sure. I think 10 wins would be an acceptable season with any more making it a good one.

That 2010s team was outrageous coupled with the fact that competition was poorer - European teams as can be seen in age group footy are pumping out much higher quality footy players.