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Sam Warburton omits two All Blacks greats in 'best international team he's faced' XV
By Ian Cameron
Sam Warburton has snubbed two All Black greats in his 'best international team he's faced' XV. The former Welsh backrow - who retired in 2018 - named the team in his autobiography - Open Side.
However, there was no room for two of New Zealand's all-time greats, Dan Carter or Richie McCaw.
Instead Warburton plumped for David Pocock at 7, who he described as 'the single hardest player I ever faced'.
Instead of Carter, he opted for England legend Jonny Wilkinson at flyhalf.
"One of my all-time heroes. I wanted to be like him - I saw how hard he trained, and I modelled myself on that," he wrote.
Both Carter and McCaw do make the subs bench, so shouldn't feel too down-hearted, as both made the replacements bench.
Elsewhere in the team there was room for plenty of other New Zealanders - with nine of the final 23 having represented the land of the long white cloud.
Warburton previously admitted to having an unwillingness to bow before All Black great McCaw, last year admitting he never wanted to swap jerseys with the New Zealander.
“I don’t want to give them, or give them the perception, that I’m giving them respect,” he said. “If they want my shirt, they can ask me, but I’m not asking them for a shirt.
“I want to be this young guy who doesn’t care, who just wants to play and who just wants to knock his head off.”
Sam Warburton's best international team he's faced: Israel Folau (Australia), Bryan Habana (South Africa), Brian O'Driscoll (Ireland), Ma'a Nonu (New Zealand), Julian Savea (New Zealand), Jonny Wilkinson (England), Will Genia (Australia), Kieran Read (New Zealand), David Pocock (Australia), Jerome Kaino (New Zealand), Sam Whitelock (New Zealand), Paul O'Connell (Ireland) (c), Carl Hayman (New Zealand), Bismarck du Plessis (South Africa), Andrew Sheridan (England).
Reserves: Guilhem Guirado (France), Cian Healy (Ireland), Tadhg Furlong (Ireland), Maro Itoje (England), Richie McCaw (New Zealand), Aaron Smith (New Zealand), Dan Carter (New Zealand), Stuart Hogg (Scotland).
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I think there's a lot of truth to that. Improved fitness, which is something that can be improved at least, would help make for better decision-making in the latter stages of the game. I also feel though that we just haven't developed enough depth yet, as they allude to. That should be the focus looking ahead. Considering how well England have done at age-grade level in recent years, we can clearly see the talent is there. It's just a case of stepping up to senior level. I do believe that Conor O'Shea has implemented a few things that will pay off. How the EPS contracts play out will be interesting and you would think would help get more out of the players, so, unlike the media storm out there, I'm not overly concerned with England at the moment. I'm more concerned with Wales. We need to be giving them encouragement and helping where we can there. At the end of the day international rugby needs to be as tight, exciting and competitive as possible if the game is to develop and spread worldwide, which it really hasn't done that well over the decades, until maybe more recently.
Go to commentsPSDT for me. I keep seeing Ox getting a lot of support in the various threads, I’m not going to pretend to know enough about font row sorcery to dispute it.
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