By Lucky Vince Pienaar
While head coach Scott “Razor” Robertson has made much of the fact that Leon MacDonald is, as he put it in an interview on RNZ, “a very good man,” he was clearly uncomfortable talking about the resignation of the senior All Black coach.
Asked what the split was about, he said: “Over some time, it hasn’t quite clicked, and we haven’t quite lined up on the rugby side of things.”
Clearly, he wasn’t going to go into the gory details about the bust-up (or whether blows and insults were traded), but a bust-up it certainly was. Razor may have expected it, but he was obviously upset about the timing.
Robertson, despite his easy-going image, clearly has specific ways of doing things, and this may have caused the conflict.
Rassie Erasmus, on the other hand, selects his coaching staff and allows his personnel to express themselves. Clearly, the entire operation works from the same page.
Robertson insists that the gaps left by MacDonald have been adequately filled, but team sports at the top level are finely balanced. Officially, nobody will admit to an unsettling effect, but in reality, it is unavoidable.
It is not the way the All Blacks would have wanted to start their mini-tour of South Africa, but they will also be inspired by the way they destroyed Argentina last week, and their squad is certainly as good as the team that faced the Springboks in France.
And this squad is not quite up to the standard of the 2015 World Cup-winning All Blacks, but they are not going to roll over and concede.
All Black squad:
Forwards: Asafo Aumua, Codie Taylor, George Bell, Ethan de Groot, Tyrel Lomax, Fletcher Newell, Pasilio Tosi, Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Tamaiti Williams, Scott Barrett, Tupou Vaa’i, Josh Lord, Sam Darry, Ethan Blackadder, Sam Cane, Samipeni Finau, Luke Jacobson, Dalton Papali’i, Ardie Savea, Wallace Sititi.
Backs: Noah Hotham, TJ Perenara, Cortez Ratima, Beauden Barrett, Damian McKenzie, Jordie Barrett, David Havili, Rieko Ioane, Anton Lienert-Brown, Billy Proctor, Caleb Clarke, Will Jordan, Ruben Love, Sevu Reece, Mark Tele’a, Harry Plummer.
Pictured above: Leon MacDonald.
Source: X
