Scott Robertson has been given the tick of approval by New Zealand coaching legend Wayne Smith for the strides he’s made this year after taking over the All Blacks job from Ian Foster.
Smith, who is New Zealand Rugby’s performance coach, spent time with the All Blacks last month before their Bledisloe Cup win over the Wallabies.
While Razor has a 6-3 win loss record in his matches since replacing Foster after the World Cup, Smith has told the New Zealand Herald that he’s noticed the new coaching team has started to “change the game” in a positive way.
He said Robertson’s coaching team was on point with a style that aligns to a game in flux where rule tweaks promote speed, safety and space in a bid to reduce stoppages.
“There are people on either side of how the All Blacks are developing. My view, having been in there before the Wellington Test, is they’ve started to change the game,” Smith told the Herald.
“You can see the ball movement is wider than it’s been. There’s an intent to keep the ball alive more in the tackle so there’s more continuity. You’re only doing it for 20-30-40 minutes but you can see it evolving.
“To me, that’s our DNA. We’re not copiers. We don’t need to play a detailed over-structured game like a lot of teams around the world. We need to play our own game, and I see that in this team.
“The coaches are open to ideas. They’re making changes now and I’m really excited to see how they’re going to go on tour. They’re going to be up against tough teams and playing our game might be difficult at times over there but over the next wee while it will really flourish. That’s my view anyway.”
The All Blacks start their northern tour against Japan on Saturday before three huge Tests against England, Ireland and France that will all test Robertson’s win ratio.
“Having coached at the top our win ratio is based on public expectation. It’s a great thing that the public demands we win. It drives you forward. Most other countries don’t have that,” said Smith.
“Since 1905 we’ve had national expectations and that’s great. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a club, NPC or All Blacks coach you’re driven to win because that’s what rugby is in our country.”
“When you got the schedule over a year ago, you looked at it and thought, ‘okay, here we go, we’ll find out a bit about ourselves’,” Robertson told reporters before the squad left Auckland on Thursday.
Scott Robertson. (Photo by Ryan Hiscott/Getty Images for Barbarians)
“We’ve had time to prepare well. When you’re on tour, it does some great things. You can get tight and get a collective buy-in, and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
Robertson knows he’s in for a battle and accepts that the gap between Southern and Northern Hemisphere rugby has closed – feeling this will make for some intriguing contests.
“If you look at it in the historical stats, you know the game’s evened up,” he added.
“Smaller margins, tighter matches. Defensively, teams are better, they’re more aggressive, they turn you in.
“But there’s still opportunities, so that’s what we’re looking for. And people going into the match thinking, ‘what’s going to happen?’, that’s the entertaining part of the game.”
New Zealand, losing finalists at last year’s World Cup, are currently ranked third in the world after a disappointing Rugby Championship in which they were beaten twice by South Africa and once, at home, by Argentina.
