Jason Pine: A solid start to the All Blacks' new regime

Weekend Sport with Jason Pine

Which players yesterday put the most pressure on for places in the All Blacks side for the Rugby Championship?

If we assume the side that played against England was the first-choice 23, who put their hand up highest yesterday for a place in the 23 for the next test against Argentina in Wellington in 3 weeks' time?

I think anyone would say Billy Proctor did.

He made a really, really good debut at centre, good running lines, nice hands under pressure, albeit against a Fijian side that didn't get up in his face like England did to Jordie Barrett and Rieko Ioane when they were here.

One of the qualities of great centres is the ability to set up their outsides, the way Joe Stanley, Frank Bunce and Conrad Smith did.

Again, Billy Proctor looks like the type of player who can do that, as well as break the line himself. He's an eyes-up player and a very quick decision-maker -so he's one.

I'd say Cortez Ratima is making a pretty good case for inclusion in the 23. It sounds like TJ Perenara will be back for the Rugby Championship and Noah Hotham did well on debut yesterday too. Throw in Finlay Christie and there's a bit of a logjam building at halfback.

One thing I'd love to see, maybe on the end of year tour, is the Cam Roigard / Cortez Ratima halfback double punch.

But even before Roigard comes back, I think Cortez Ratima is ideally suited right now to the impact role off the All Blacks bench.
The scrum was good yesterday, with an almost entirely different pack in action, the lineout was certainly better than the shambles at Eden Park and they conceded just one try against a side renowned for their attacking unpredictability and strike power.

So, a lot of boxes were ticked.

There is, of course, the caveat of how much we can take from a game against Fiji, who, while they've improved in recent years, didn't look anything like the same side that beat England and Australia last year.

But you can only play what's in front of you, and the All Blacks did that.

And finally- no cards, red or yellow, in the first three tests under Razor. Compare that to last year, with Sam Cane's red and Shannon Frizell's yellow in the World Cup final, Codie Taylor and Aaron Smith's yellows against Ireland in the quarter-final, Ethan de Groot's red against Namibia in pool play, Will Jordan's yellow against France in the opening game and Sam Cane's yellow and Scott Barrett's red in the warm-up match against South Africa.

5 yellow and three red cards in the last eight test of 2023, none so far this year.

That's a sign of pretty good discipline under the new regime.

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