Will the All Blacks miss out at the World Cup? They might, and it isn’t just for one simple reason.
The All Blacks are religious about rugby in the same way as India is religious about cricket. They will not go to the World Cup without the best possible preparation.
You can work through the whole squad and you will struggle to find a single weakness.
When you look at their record since the start of 2022, it has not been their best in recent times, although it was still impressive. In 2022 they had 4 losses and a draw and overall, since the start of 2022 they have played 15 games. For the All Blacks, a 67% win record is atrocious!
Here are the reasons though that I think they might get knocked out:
- They have a difficult road to the final – they play France in their pool, then need to face either South Africa or Ireland in the quarter-finals. The semis will probably be against England, Argentina or Australia. If they get past that hurdle, it comes back around to either South Africa, Ireland, or France again as their opponents in the finals, depending on how their respective knockout games worked out.
- They are vulnerable if they can’t attack – when teams attack hard against them, they defend well for the most part. They usually absorb a ton of pressure before turning it into attack eventually and then they slowly dismantle defenses. When they are however not allowed to play their free-flowing rugby and they are constantly stopped behind the gain line, they start to make mistakes and this has proven to be their downfall in recent times.
- Why is Scott Robertson not coaching? This is one of the things that confused me greatly when Ian Foster got appointed ahead of Scott. Ian has a top rugby pedigree and he definitely has the ability to mould a squad into a competitive team. With Scott, it is however like not having Alex Ferguson coach a team after winning everything with Manchester United for over two decades. It blows my mind.
Will that trip up the All Blacks? It is difficult to tell.
They are however not the perfect team they were at the 2015 World Cup, which was probably the best All Black team of all time.