Boklogic
I am not going toi get into new argument about the issue of the All Blacks - I am just going to repeat what I said previously when I wrote about the age factor of the All Blacks. The average age of the players in the team as whole is 30 - the average age of the forwards is 32. When i suggested that most of those players are past their prime and they should have a replacement policy if they want to continue to win - the AB supporters said that they have indeed started the process and referred to Retallick and Aaron Smith.
I then started watching those two players in particular in games they play in. Retallick is big in size and poor in performance. He rarely takes a clean line out ball and the only noticeable thing he did in the Soweto test for example was the spear tackle he did on Bekker. Yesterday he did squat in the game. If he is an example of the best younger players they have - then the All Blacks are indeed in deep trouble.
Aaron Smith on the other hand always looked good in attack. There has been deficiencies in defence and in his kicking game. Yesterday he was on two occassions put under pressure and did not look good at all. I think that opposing teams soon work out new players and go for them - and the result is that they become neutrlaized and inaffective. In my opinion that is exactly what happened in the case of Hougaard - when he came on the scene everyone said he was the best in the world - nowadays he is in general a very poor scrummie - last niights efforts in the Bulls - Sharks game just confirm that he really is extremely poor. Is the same going to happen with Smith?
I believe that the two best players in the All Black team that made them function as the top team in the world are McCaw and Carter. When i wrote previously that there is a noticeable decline in the play of McCaw - the NZ supporters attacked me as if I was committing sacrilege. How can any human being even query McCaw? Then he announced he was taking a sabbatical from rugby during the first six months of next year. Yesterday he played like he was already on the sabbatical. I don't think McCaw will in fact come back a better player than he was yesterday and that is going to cost the All Black team badly in future. McCaw is in fact the one player that they are going to find virtually irreplaceable. There is nobody in the younger category that can perform 10% of what McCaw was in his prime.
Now let me commit further sacrilege. Let me get to Carter - where I said the same thing. Carter lately stands deeper in the pocket and kicks balls more frequently than he did in the past. He sometimes still attack the gain line - but those occassions seems to get more rare as time goes by. Let me be quite frank - he is still the best flyhalf in the world - his passing game is still good - his defensive kicks are excellent - but his strategiic kicks are generally way too far to allow for his players to follow it up effectively. His goal kicking under pressure situations are somwhat erratic. Kicks he would not have missed two years ago - he has missed this year. He is also injured more regularly and takes longer to recover - that may be the reason for him standing deeper in the pocket, the decline in the number of gain line attacks and more frequent kicking of the ball. That brings me to his potential future replacement. Cruden is at best average - under pressure really not nice to see. Barrett is a playe in the mould of Jantjies and Cooper - players I do not really rate at all. As far as I am concerned they are also not producing 10% of what Carter at his prime produced.
Without McCaw and Carter the All Blacks are not the same team. They recently tried to open up the game constantly and make the forwards run like backline players (way to often leading to handling errors) - but they do not do the hard graft up front. This in the past was basically where players like McCaw and other senior players did the work. When they did try to do that recently - the end result normally were far too many penalties for illegal play.
The problem here is that the senior players in the team - typified by McCaw and Carter - in the past helped the team to attain greatness - but the senior players are getting too old to perform on a regular basis and the juniors coming through to replace them are not up to their standards. This is nothing new in rugby. It happened in 2007 with the POMS and in 2011 with the Springboks
In fact I believe that the future lies with the younger teams like Australia and South Africa and not with a team comprising in what i call "rugby geriattics". We will seee what will happen next year.
