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The End of Year tours are fast approaching and after a titanic Rugby Championship, the All Blacks have some questions to answer.
Nine Tests into their 2024 international season, the Kiwis have shown they are a team dealing with a few growing pains under new leadership.
The lone member of the team’s new coaching group who was with the squad for their World Cup campaign last year is forwards coach Jason Ryan, offering the guru a unique perspective on the team’s current state.
Ahead of a gruelling final five Tests of the year, Ryan reflected on the season to date as well as what’s to come.
“I think the whole year has been (massive) to be honest,” he told the Aotearoa Rugby Pod. “Right from when that calendar came out and you knew we had a couple of Tests against South Africa in South Africa – the world champions, how good?
“After a World Cup year, there’s two ways you can look at it. You can go ‘well, it’s a lot of Tests’ or you can go ‘this is exactly what we need’ – I believe the calendar is that.
“It finds out where your pressure points are pretty quickly. I think we’ve grown a bit in that space.
“If you look at heading north, in Japan she’s going to be pretty hot so that’s a lot of movement in the game; they play fast.
“And then we head straight to England and it’s a short turnaround for Ireland and then France so that’ll give us different challenges that we’ll need to adapt pretty quickly to and we’ll find out where our game’s at.
“We’re growing all the time, I think we’ve found a lot out about ourselves in that South Africa series and also the finishing part of the games which we’ve put a lot of work into through the Bledisloe.
“So, it is exciting and heading to Europe is awesome as an All Blacks team. The crowds and the atmosphere, it’s pretty special to be a part of so we’re looking forward to it.”
The team had been uncharacteristically poor in closing out games throughout The Rugby Championship, letting leads slip in South Africa before almost doing the same against Australia.
Ryan expanded on what the biggest growth areas have been for the team to grow through that problem and any others.
“I think that’s where we’re just growing our week and how we prepare and what we put in front of the boys and understanding that at the All Black level, at the Test level you actually don’t have to give them a lot. I think we… you come in and you’re a new coaching group and you’re just trying to make your mark on the team and I think as we found out, probably the less we have the better the boys would play. As simple as that sounds.
“I think that’s what we’re growing all the time in our preparation individually as well as in our own units but also as a whole coaching group.
“When you look at the South Africa series, we were actually really satisfied with how we pushed the Boks. We had a chance to win both Tests but we didn’t and we didn’t sugarcoat that.
“When you look at them, they’ve had what? Seven-odd years together and they know their game, they know their identity. We’d been together seven weeks. So, that’s a reality.
“But we’ll get there. I believe that we’re trending up and we’ve shown some good glimpses of young All Blacks, I believe it’s eight new caps on the season. It’s exciting.
“You find out all the time around those accuracy in those moments at the end which are so important because the pressure and the game, it just shifts so fast. You’ve never really got a lead, teams can score so quickly so expecting that and trusting our game is something we’re always looking to evolve really.”