{"id":291331,"date":"2025-11-17T23:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291331\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T23:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:10:08","slug":"all-blacks-paid-the-ultimate-price-for-going-away-from-what-was-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/291331\/","title":{"rendered":"All Blacks ‘paid the ultimate price’ for ‘going away from what was working’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former All Blacks<\/a> pivot Stephen Donald<\/a> has delivered his analysis on what went wrong in New Zealand\u2019s loss to England<\/a> at Twickenham, saying the Kiwis went away from what was working as England started to dictate terms.<\/p>\n

The 2011 Rugby World Cup<\/a> hero reacted to the All Blacks\u2019 third loss of the 2025 season this week with plenty of praise for their opponents, and fellow No.10 George Ford<\/a> in particular, who was awarded Man of the Match for his efforts in a famous win.<\/p>\n

Ford\u2019s two drop-goals in the closing stages of the first half, after an Ollie Lawrence<\/a> try initially reduced the England deficit, chipped away at what was a 12-0 New Zealand<\/a> lead after 18 minutes. Ford\u2019s game management and kicking off the tee thereafter continued to steer his side in the right direction both around the park and on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n

After giving Ford his flowers for a commanding performance and naming him a top-three drop-goal kicker of all time, only behind South Africa\u2019s Morne Steyn<\/a> and England\u2019s Johnny Wilkinson, Donald turned his attention to the game\u2019s tactics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what England did well was they brought up the All Blacks to them. And I\u2019m not saying bring them to their level, I\u2019m just saying bringing the All Blacks to their game,\u201d he explained on The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe All Blacks\u2019 first 20-25 minutes, I was quite smugly sitting on the couch thinking, oh yeah, here we go. What a place to make a statement; Twickenham, full house. Everyone\u2019s down on the All Blacks, but no, we\u2019re going to go and put a good score on them, because we\u2019re just playing too fast, too skilful.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then a few things happened. The game started to slow down a bit. And that\u2019s not to say that England weren\u2019t attacking. When England attacked, they looked great. But they did it on their terms, did it at their pace, did it when they wanted to. They didn\u2019t allow the All Blacks, or didn\u2019t seem to allow the All Blacks, to break the game up, which I thought they were doing very well in the first 20-25 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the play was coming off Quin Tupaea. They had clearly, in their set piece analysis, identified that (England\u2019s) back three was suspect, positionally, both as far as covering kicks and off first phase attack. So the All Blacks\u2019 first phase attack, I thought, was great. They exploited the fact that England were coming up nice and square, but weren\u2019t coming up at a pace that was going to shut the play down.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you think about what led to the tries; the wingers and centres were in no man\u2019s land, and then the fullback was even more in no man\u2019s land because he wasn\u2019t connected to his winger. And 20 or 30 out from your line, you\u2019ve got to be connected to your winger so you can shut down players. They weren\u2019t shutting the All Blacks down. That was great analysis. They had a plan, and clearly it was working for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think about the (Cam) Roigard 50\/22, easily manipulating by just sending a guy on the open side bringing, I think it was (Freddie) Steward at the time, across, opens up the space for 50\/22.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it appears that, through a few things, England getting the game to be played how they want it to be played, dictating terms, slowed the game right down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought our defensive line out was great. (Josh) Lord was picking them off and the like. So all these little things were working for them. The four-man lineout was working for them, then they went away from that, which surprised me, especially in the middle of the park, where it just seemed easy for them to win possession again in that first 20-25 minutes. But as the game wore on, they went away from what was working, I think, and paid the ultimate price.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former All Blacks pivot Stephen Donald has delivered his analysis on what went wrong in New Zealand\u2019s loss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-291331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291331","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=291331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}