All Blacks v Wallabies: Dave Rennie’s side move forward but some questions can’t yet be answered – Gregor Paul
There has been a little Goldilocks Syndrome baked into the All Blacks’ Bledisloe Cup victories of the last decade.
At times, wins against Australia have been made to mean too much – an inflated sense of superiority arising from the ease with which the perennially embattled Wallabies have been deconstructed.
More recently, there has perhaps been a dismissive edge to what has now become the default setting – 30-plus wins that feel like the All Blacks have been playing against 14 men.
The All Blacks are now on a 13-game winning streak against the Wallabies and the ability to gauge what value to take from the annual Bledisloe romp has become harder than ever.
These last two weeks have been among the most difficult to assess of any since the All Blacks regained the trophy in 2003 and there has been the usual division among the intellectual classes as to whether it was all a giant waste of time or a promising index by which to recalibrate following the 3-1 series loss to the Springboks, the World Cup champions.
Part of the uncertainty has been generated by the Wallabies coming into the Bledisloe on the back of a one-off victory against the South Africans – albeit a team that was different, almost entirely, in personnel to the one the All Blacks faced in four successive weekends.
Still, the Wallabies managed to front physically against the Boks, beat them in the air and get the better of them at the breakdown – something the All Blacks weren’t able to do.
The Wallabies had also banked a win and a draw against the Pumas in Argentina and with undoubted class in their backline and a back row capable of winning them turnover ball, there was a sense of the 2026 vintage being a little better and more resilient than some of their predecessors.
Those who subscribe to the view that the last two games have been an exercise in futility cite the time and space afforded the All Blacks to play, the passive defending by the Wallabies and their continual ability to shoot themselves in the foot with a careless pass, spilled ball or act of ill discipline.
There is merit to this line of argument. Real test rugby is not generous of spirit: it is a miserly, mean place where nothing is given easily and every inch has to be fought for, every half-chance painstakingly created and every mistake, however small, ruthlessly punished.
This was the main story arc of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tests – it was a brutal, smothering, intense series where the Boks kept the pressure on to ensure the All Blacks were never given the inch to turn into the proverbial mile.
The last half-hour in Sydney, where the All Blacks lost their shape and flow – albeit not helped by the injury toll they suffered – will fuel the hardliners into saying that there is little to no reason to take anything positive from the Bledisloe series.
But the analysis of the last two weeks need not be as equally mean-spirited as the Springboks’ defence and the story not written up as merely one where the world’s second-best team predictably beat the one ranked seventh.
Neither the win at Eden Park nor the follow-up in Sydney can be attributed solely to a malfunctioning Wallabies defence.
Some kind of credit is due the All Blacks for the ferocity with which they carried the ball, the speed and dynamism with which the cleaners hit rucks, the handling of the forwards, who all looked comfortable on the ball and who all made strong decisions about when to pass and how to adapt it for the situation.
The Australian defence wasn’t great, but it wasn’t nothing either and it’s madly unfair to imply that any half-decent international team could have built the same momentum and scored the same number of tries.
The first 40 minutes in Sydney were a brilliant demonstration of continuity rugby by the All Blacks – a deadly example of how good they can be when their athleticism, skillsets, physicality, desire and game understanding all combine.
The chief takeaway, therefore, has to be that the All Blacks are growing more comfortable at executing a high-tempo, expressive game built on a desire to attack and take risks.
It’s a style of game that will clearly be able to be more easily and more effectively executed against similarly attack-minded teams such as Australia and Scotland, who New Zealand play next, because risk-taking leads to space being more readily afforded.
Whether it’s a style that can regularly beat the likes of South Africa, France and Ireland, who tend to be more circumspect and conservative about when, where and how they use the ball, remains the unknown.
Equally, whether the All Blacks can win next year’s World Cup with this ruck-and-run, high-intensity plan is another question that can’t yet be answered.
But what can be said with some confidence is that this style of rugby stands a higher chance of succeeding the better the All Blacks can implement it – and this is why the last two weeks have been of value.
They were an exercise in building confidence, understanding and belief. Some of the patterns are now being loaded into the collective muscle memory and individuals are operating on instinct, their actions executed before their brain has run through any checklist or processed possible options.
In the greater scheme, the All Blacks have taken two steps forward and to some degree, it was irrelevant that they did so against the Wallabies.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
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