{"id":180942,"date":"2025-09-30T21:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/180942\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T21:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T21:30:09","slug":"the-all-blacks-question-that-bledisloe-1-has-answered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/180942\/","title":{"rendered":"The All Blacks question that Bledisloe 1 has answered"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The All Blacks<\/a>\u2018 flip-flopping Rugby Championship<\/a> campaign continued in round five with a win over the Wallabies. It was a performance that left some questions still unanswered, but others may have finally been resolved.<\/p>\n

Every sports fan\u2019s favourite topic, selections, were back on the agenda following the win, but this time in a positive light.<\/p>\n

After some trial and error from selectors to begin the year, the wing duo of Caleb Clarke<\/a> and Leroy Carter<\/a> appears to have convinced pundits that they\u2019re the men for the starting jobs, having each scored a try in the opening 13 minutes of the game.<\/p>\n

While Clarke only made it to halftime due to an ankle tweak, his presence as a kick-chaser and cross-field kick target was evident from the outset, and remedied an area of weakness for New Zealand<\/a> this season. The 26-year-old enjoyed a viral moment pregame, when his father, former All Black Eroni Clarke, surprised him by singing the New Zealand national anthem.<\/p>\n

\"Team Attack \"Team <\/p>\n

440m<\/p>\n

Post Contact Metres<\/p>\n

307m<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Carter, on the other wing, again looked right at home in his second Test match. The Super Rugby rookie caught the eye of 66-cap Kiwi flyer Israel<\/a> Dagg.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so busy, not only on attack, but defensively,\u201d Dagg reflected on his Sport Nation radio segment. \u201cDid you see that shot he put on Len Ikitau? A shot when it was needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so busy, the work rate, and that try is not your conventional winger\u2019s try. But he\u2019s in there, he\u2019s looking for work, he\u2019s doing a pick-and-go on the tryline. I thought he was outstanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Caleb Clarke<\/a>, I think we\u2019ve found our wingers. It\u2019s unfortunate Caleb went off. I spoke with him after the match; hopefully, it\u2019s not too serious, just a little bruise on the Achilles. He looked very, very good on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarke travelled with the team to Perth on Sunday, signalling he may be available for the tournament\u2019s final round.<\/p>\n

The wing partnership was also given the tick of approval by 2011 All Blacks hero Stephen Donald.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey certainly aren\u2019t going to get dropped from the next one. I thought they were a good combination, and it\u2019s good to see busy wingers who are in form,\u201d Donald said on The Aftermatch with Kirst and Beav<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeroy Carter has absolutely made every post a winner, and you think back to who\u2019s previously been in those wing jerseys, and then you add Emoni Narawa<\/a>, who had a fantastic five minutes against the Boks before he was cruelly injured.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not been entirely performance-based, the musical chairs, there have been injuries\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201c(Carter) has been outstanding defensively. On Saturday night, there were a couple of times when he saw what was unfolding, knew he was outnumbered, and he took it upon himself to fly out and shut down their attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if the wingers have got that license under the All Blacks\u2019 defensive set-up or if he\u2019s just got a rugby brain on him and decided this has to get shut down or else we\u2019re in trouble.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a space of about 10 minutes there, around halfway, he\u2019s clobbered a few people. He\u2019s not a massive man when compared to what\u2019s running around international rugby, but he was winning those contacts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, Leroy Carter\u2019s going from strength to strength. Caleb was obviously brought in because he\u2019s a big, explosive winger first and foremost, but also for his aerial game, and it was by far our best game of the year as far as the aerial game goes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The All Blacks\u2018 flip-flopping Rugby Championship campaign continued in round five with a win over the Wallabies. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-180942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}