July 20, 2024 • 14 mins
All Blacks coach Scott Robertson's clearly on a hot streak, having won 3 straight test matches in a row.
The team beat Fiji 47-5 in San Diego last night, with six new faces making their All Blacks debut.
Former All Blacks coach Laurie Mains joined Piney to discuss Robertson's prowess.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now, I've the Medlo the pipe for pasily O Tossi,
Tossy lucky to link up for Wallace at tit's a
Titi taking a meter short of the line. All Black
swarmn pecking go Ethan the Groat's over.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah. Probably the best of the All Blacks seven tries
yesterday with debutants pasily O, Tossi and Wallace s Titi
combining to set up Ethan de Groot. Three wins in
three Test matches for Scott Robertson to start his tenure
as All Blacks coach. Laurie Mains, of course, had that
job from nineteen ninety two until nineteen ninety five, including
the nineteen ninety five Rugby World Cup, overseeing fifty wins
(00:47):
in his sixty two games in charge. He's with us now, Laurie,
how happy do you think Scott Robertson will be after
his first three test matches in charge?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I think of Vice who might be pretty happy, and
the reason being that the All Blacks lost a solid
corps of really experienced and talents. Talented players and he's
really had to start fresh, very much as I did
when I started. And then to strike England, who were
really on form and I thought, very very competitive in
(01:22):
the two test matches and come away with wins was
really encouraging for him. I could see a very clear
game plan they were wanting to play, and I could
see total commitment from all of the players, and that
team I think can only improve from here.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Tell us a bit more about the game plan that
you saw. You can see from watching these matches the
way Scott Robertson wants the All Blacks to play well.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
What I can see is certain phases and endeavors that
the teams the team is trying to accomplish, and that
each player appears to know his role in that. I
don't want to talk too much about what I think
is game planning is in case I'm right, but because
(02:12):
I'm sure he wouldn't want that broadcast around the world.
But it's very much you know, some of the Crusader
tactics are involved. And what you also have to remember
it it's very early days. He probably only had control
of that team, you know, for a week or two
(02:34):
before the first test, and it's early days. And I
think against Fiji over the weekend we saw an enhancement
of that program. If you bear in mind that Fiji
have been a pretty competitive international team in the last
two or three years, and they perform well at the
(02:55):
World Cup. Well, the All Black shut them down basically
and then scored you know, forty plus points of their
own and I thought that, you know, it was a
sterling effort and there was very good build ups to
a number of those tries.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
He talked about the way that the team wants to
play and apart from winning all three Test matches, which
I'm sure as a metric that they talk about or
don't talk about, what other measures Laurie would would Scott
Robertson and his coaching stuff be using to gauge success
or progress or both across these three matches.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Well, in particular, I think against England, he would be
looking at all of the new players that he brought
into the squad to see how they measured up in
his game plan, the instructions that he had given them
to play. Because England were very competitive, they were strong
defensively and they were it was music, you know for
(03:56):
me to watch that and see two real Test matches
which we don't often see these days. We do when
we play South Africa and so on, but they were
two real test matches and I think Scott Robinson would
have got an awful lot of learning out of that
about his combinations, for example, front rows, locks, inside backs,
(04:20):
outside backs. He would have got very good measures from that.
And individual players who were right up against it, and
they were if they fronted in those two test matches,
they can only get very much better as time goes on.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I want to talk about being a new All Blacks
coach and back to nineteen ninety two. In your first
first test against the World fifteen, you gave daboos to
Jamie Joseph and Adam Pennay. You also picked Paul Henderson,
John Timu, Greg Cooper, all of who you'd coached at Otago.
How tempting was it early in your All Blacks tenure
to select players you'd worked with as Otago coach.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Well, Earl Kerton and I spent a lot of time
talking about will we should start with the team, and
we both agreed that nineteen ninety two had to be
a watershed year. We had to replace, you know, so
the All Blacks that have been stars and superstars, but
(05:21):
weren't going to still be there at the next World Cup.
We felt the sooner we started bringing some of these
players in, they're better. They're going to be, you know,
by nineteen ninety five. And I guess it was tempting
to bring players in that I had coached previously and
(05:42):
knew what they could achieve. I think most coaches do that,
and then you can gradually change them or develop them further.
If they're a success, you can develop them further or
replace them with other players as is necessary. But those
(06:03):
first the first two years I think of a World
Cup side is where a coach and selectors need to
really get the foundation and the basis of their team established. They,
you know, based on maybe your ten best players, who
are automatic choices. Based on them, you know what style
(06:24):
of rugby you can best play, and then you have
to you have to bring in players to complement the
strength of those tens, those ten based players.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So you were thinking about the nineteen ninety five Rugby
World Cup pretty much as soon as you took over
in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yes, yeah, definitely. And look I can remember in my
interviews with New Zealand rugby that I had said to them,
you know, there was a number of pretty aged players
in the all black side and I would be bringing
in quite a few new players in my first year
(07:04):
to use it as part of the platform helping and
they were supportive of that.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
How soon after you bring someone into the all blacks environments,
are you able to predict or tell if they'll make
it as an all black?
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Well, when players come in like Will Jordan, for example,
you know straight away that he's going to go on
and be a great player. Other players are a little
bit more tented of starting. I'll use an example Jamie Joseph.
He was a tough, hard player and he was one
(07:43):
that just needed to learn what tess rugby was about.
And he did and he went on, you know, to
become a great player.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I guess I'm asking the question because I mean, three
years seems like a long time, doesn't it. But if
you're planning right from the start, I just wonder how
how you know when somebody isn't going to be up
to it? How you you know? You try someone out,
you think to yourself, you know what, this guy probably
isn't going to be there at the World Cup. Is
it just is it kind to be cruel if you
know what I mean and say, sorry, mate, this isn't
(08:15):
this isn't what we're after.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Well, it is the last thing I'm going to do
is embarrassed players or anything like that. But we discarded
two or three after the first year and after the
second year the same. We tried players out and just
to see how they would measure against the top players.
(08:38):
If you remember in nineteen ninety two we went over
and played the world champions Australia and we only won
one Test out of three, but we were done out
of the second Test. We should have had it as well.
And they were all very very close encounters, so you
can look, you know, you can see straight away when
(09:01):
a player stands up. And if we just go back
a little bit, the boy Roy Guard from Wellington from
the Hurricanes, he's injured at the moment. First two or
three games I saw him play, I said, right, he's
going to replace Aaron Smith. That boy. He is an
(09:22):
outstanding player. And some players stand out like that. And
of course the other great delight I got out of
the second Test against England and again last night was
to see Boden Barrett back at his best, I mean
his mercial, brilliant best, and that's the best he's played
(09:44):
for quite some time. And so clearly Scott Robinson or
his fellow coaches have let him do what he does
does naturally, and that is play spontaneous rugby. And I
guess at fullback he's also a great first five eight,
(10:06):
like he was World Player of the Year for two
years Morow as a first five eight and then he
was taken out of that position. But he is also
a mercurial fullback. And I don't care where he plays
first five eight or fullback. He just has to be
in the team.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
How long did it take you to feel at home
as All Blacks coach?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
I don't know, you know. I think ninety five was
the first year. It was interesting. We tried to develop
tactics that were new in international rugby, and I think
I think that is well known by the rugby historians
that we introduced a new style of test rugby and
(10:57):
then we had to select players to achieve that. I'll
just use one example. I think it was ninety three.
We played Australia after having like running into a brick
wall with their defense around rucks and malls, you know,
one off runners and this sort of thing, which were
(11:17):
flavor of the day at that time early and I said, well,
we've got to break that up. Why don't we try
a pick and go right through the middle. And we
ended up that day scoring two of our tries started
with us getting behind their defense line, getting them gone
backwards because we opened up rucks and malls, picked and
(11:40):
went straight through the middle, and then that became you know,
but then we put that away. We said, right, that
has worked better than we expected it to after such
short introduction to the team, So let's put that aside
until worked up yere. Otherwise everybody would be doing it
by the time we get there. We actually shelved it
(12:03):
for two years.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Fascinating chatting rugby with you, Laurie. So just to finish,
you feel optimistic about the start of Razor's reign as
All Blacks.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Coach, Well, yes I do. And there's two reasons. What
he achieved with the Crusaders. I don't care how good
a players they are, you know where they got their
players from doesn't matter. To win that championship seven times
in a row is simply sensational. That makes me know
that he's going to get this All Black team performing
(12:36):
to its best. And what I saw, they had to
fight like hell to win both of the tests against England,
and that just showed me that those players were totally
committed to the team. And that's a first achievement for
a coach is to get his players totally committed to
the team and to the game plan. And each time
(13:00):
they've played, but you know, you can see more about
what they're trying to achieve. That first Test against England
would have been one of the hardest matches to plan.
I think many of those All Blacks will have faced.
England were good and you know they defensively, they were
(13:21):
very aggressive and very strong. And then second Test, once
especially when Boden came on, it started to open up
and he created opportunities and then we saw more of
that sort of play against Fiji. There were some beautifully
constructed ties in the match against Fiji. So I'm incredibly
(13:42):
optimistic about where this team is going to go. The
best I felt for a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Good man, Yeah, great to chant us always, mate, Thanks
for taking the time this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Okay, by now all the best.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Laurie Mains, former All Blacks coach were some really interesting thoughts.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk ZB weekends from midday, or follow the
pontodcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Weekend Sport podcast with Jason Vine
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now, I've the Medlo the pipe for pasily O Tossi,
Tossy lucky to link up for Wallace at tit's a
Titi taking a meter short of the line. All Black
swarmn pecking go Ethan the Groat's over.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah. Probably the best of the All Blacks seven tries
yesterday with debutants pasily O, Tossi and Wallace s Titi
combining to set up Ethan de Groot. Three wins in
three Test matches for Scott Robertson to start his tenure
as All Blacks coach. Laurie Mains, of course, had that
job from nineteen ninety two until nineteen ninety five, including
the nineteen ninety five Rugby World Cup, overseeing fifty wins
(00:47):
in his sixty two games in charge. He's with us now, Laurie,
how happy do you think Scott Robertson will be after
his first three test matches in charge?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I think of Vice who might be pretty happy, and
the reason being that the All Blacks lost a solid
corps of really experienced and talents. Talented players and he's
really had to start fresh, very much as I did
when I started. And then to strike England, who were
really on form and I thought, very very competitive in
(01:22):
the two test matches and come away with wins was
really encouraging for him. I could see a very clear
game plan they were wanting to play, and I could
see total commitment from all of the players, and that
team I think can only improve from here.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Tell us a bit more about the game plan that
you saw. You can see from watching these matches the
way Scott Robertson wants the All Blacks to play well.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
What I can see is certain phases and endeavors that
the teams the team is trying to accomplish, and that
each player appears to know his role in that. I
don't want to talk too much about what I think
is game planning is in case I'm right, but because
(02:12):
I'm sure he wouldn't want that broadcast around the world.
But it's very much you know, some of the Crusader
tactics are involved. And what you also have to remember
it it's very early days. He probably only had control
of that team, you know, for a week or two
(02:34):
before the first test, and it's early days. And I
think against Fiji over the weekend we saw an enhancement
of that program. If you bear in mind that Fiji
have been a pretty competitive international team in the last
two or three years, and they perform well at the
(02:55):
World Cup. Well, the All Black shut them down basically
and then scored you know, forty plus points of their
own and I thought that, you know, it was a
sterling effort and there was very good build ups to
a number of those tries.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
He talked about the way that the team wants to
play and apart from winning all three Test matches, which
I'm sure as a metric that they talk about or
don't talk about, what other measures Laurie would would Scott
Robertson and his coaching stuff be using to gauge success
or progress or both across these three matches.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Well, in particular, I think against England, he would be
looking at all of the new players that he brought
into the squad to see how they measured up in
his game plan, the instructions that he had given them
to play. Because England were very competitive, they were strong
defensively and they were it was music, you know for
(03:56):
me to watch that and see two real Test matches
which we don't often see these days. We do when
we play South Africa and so on, but they were
two real test matches and I think Scott Robinson would
have got an awful lot of learning out of that
about his combinations, for example, front rows, locks, inside backs,
(04:20):
outside backs. He would have got very good measures from that.
And individual players who were right up against it, and
they were if they fronted in those two test matches,
they can only get very much better as time goes on.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I want to talk about being a new All Blacks
coach and back to nineteen ninety two. In your first
first test against the World fifteen, you gave daboos to
Jamie Joseph and Adam Pennay. You also picked Paul Henderson,
John Timu, Greg Cooper, all of who you'd coached at Otago.
How tempting was it early in your All Blacks tenure
to select players you'd worked with as Otago coach.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Well, Earl Kerton and I spent a lot of time
talking about will we should start with the team, and
we both agreed that nineteen ninety two had to be
a watershed year. We had to replace, you know, so
the All Blacks that have been stars and superstars, but
(05:21):
weren't going to still be there at the next World Cup.
We felt the sooner we started bringing some of these
players in, they're better. They're going to be, you know,
by nineteen ninety five. And I guess it was tempting
to bring players in that I had coached previously and
(05:42):
knew what they could achieve. I think most coaches do that,
and then you can gradually change them or develop them further.
If they're a success, you can develop them further or
replace them with other players as is necessary. But those
(06:03):
first the first two years I think of a World
Cup side is where a coach and selectors need to
really get the foundation and the basis of their team established. They,
you know, based on maybe your ten best players, who
are automatic choices. Based on them, you know what style
(06:24):
of rugby you can best play, and then you have
to you have to bring in players to complement the
strength of those tens, those ten based players.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So you were thinking about the nineteen ninety five Rugby
World Cup pretty much as soon as you took over
in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Yes, yeah, definitely. And look I can remember in my
interviews with New Zealand rugby that I had said to them,
you know, there was a number of pretty aged players
in the all black side and I would be bringing
in quite a few new players in my first year
(07:04):
to use it as part of the platform helping and
they were supportive of that.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
How soon after you bring someone into the all blacks environments,
are you able to predict or tell if they'll make
it as an all black?
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Well, when players come in like Will Jordan, for example,
you know straight away that he's going to go on
and be a great player. Other players are a little
bit more tented of starting. I'll use an example Jamie Joseph.
He was a tough, hard player and he was one
(07:43):
that just needed to learn what tess rugby was about.
And he did and he went on, you know, to
become a great player.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I guess I'm asking the question because I mean, three
years seems like a long time, doesn't it. But if
you're planning right from the start, I just wonder how
how you know when somebody isn't going to be up
to it? How you you know? You try someone out,
you think to yourself, you know what, this guy probably
isn't going to be there at the World Cup. Is
it just is it kind to be cruel if you
know what I mean and say, sorry, mate, this isn't
(08:15):
this isn't what we're after.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Well, it is the last thing I'm going to do
is embarrassed players or anything like that. But we discarded
two or three after the first year and after the
second year the same. We tried players out and just
to see how they would measure against the top players.
(08:38):
If you remember in nineteen ninety two we went over
and played the world champions Australia and we only won
one Test out of three, but we were done out
of the second Test. We should have had it as well.
And they were all very very close encounters, so you
can look, you know, you can see straight away when
(09:01):
a player stands up. And if we just go back
a little bit, the boy Roy Guard from Wellington from
the Hurricanes, he's injured at the moment. First two or
three games I saw him play, I said, right, he's
going to replace Aaron Smith. That boy. He is an
(09:22):
outstanding player. And some players stand out like that. And
of course the other great delight I got out of
the second Test against England and again last night was
to see Boden Barrett back at his best, I mean
his mercial, brilliant best, and that's the best he's played
(09:44):
for quite some time. And so clearly Scott Robinson or
his fellow coaches have let him do what he does
does naturally, and that is play spontaneous rugby. And I
guess at fullback he's also a great first five eight,
(10:06):
like he was World Player of the Year for two
years Morow as a first five eight and then he
was taken out of that position. But he is also
a mercurial fullback. And I don't care where he plays
first five eight or fullback. He just has to be
in the team.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
How long did it take you to feel at home
as All Blacks coach?
Speaker 4 (10:32):
I don't know, you know. I think ninety five was
the first year. It was interesting. We tried to develop
tactics that were new in international rugby, and I think
I think that is well known by the rugby historians
that we introduced a new style of test rugby and
(10:57):
then we had to select players to achieve that. I'll
just use one example. I think it was ninety three.
We played Australia after having like running into a brick
wall with their defense around rucks and malls, you know,
one off runners and this sort of thing, which were
(11:17):
flavor of the day at that time early and I said, well,
we've got to break that up. Why don't we try
a pick and go right through the middle. And we
ended up that day scoring two of our tries started
with us getting behind their defense line, getting them gone
backwards because we opened up rucks and malls, picked and
(11:40):
went straight through the middle, and then that became you know,
but then we put that away. We said, right, that
has worked better than we expected it to after such
short introduction to the team, So let's put that aside
until worked up yere. Otherwise everybody would be doing it
by the time we get there. We actually shelved it
(12:03):
for two years.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Fascinating chatting rugby with you, Laurie. So just to finish,
you feel optimistic about the start of Razor's reign as
All Blacks.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Coach, Well, yes I do. And there's two reasons. What
he achieved with the Crusaders. I don't care how good
a players they are, you know where they got their
players from doesn't matter. To win that championship seven times
in a row is simply sensational. That makes me know
that he's going to get this All Black team performing
(12:36):
to its best. And what I saw, they had to
fight like hell to win both of the tests against England,
and that just showed me that those players were totally
committed to the team. And that's a first achievement for
a coach is to get his players totally committed to
the team and to the game plan. And each time
(13:00):
they've played, but you know, you can see more about
what they're trying to achieve. That first Test against England
would have been one of the hardest matches to plan.
I think many of those All Blacks will have faced.
England were good and you know they defensively, they were
(13:21):
very aggressive and very strong. And then second Test, once
especially when Boden came on, it started to open up
and he created opportunities and then we saw more of
that sort of play against Fiji. There were some beautifully
constructed ties in the match against Fiji. So I'm incredibly
(13:42):
optimistic about where this team is going to go. The
best I felt for a long time.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Good man, Yeah, great to chant us always, mate, Thanks
for taking the time this afternoon.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Okay, by now all the best.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Laurie Mains, former All Blacks coach were some really interesting thoughts.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
For more from Weekend Sport with Jason Fine, listen live
to News Talk ZB weekends from midday, or follow the
pontodcast on iHeartRadio
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