{"id":295484,"date":"2025-11-19T19:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295484\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T19:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:46:12","slug":"justin-marshall-berates-all-blacks-for-lack-of-springboks-esque-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295484\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Marshall berates All Blacks for lack of Springboks-esque ‘innovation’"},"content":{"rendered":"

All Blacks great Justin Marshall has urged Scott Robertson to rethink his view on the bench after the success of the Springboks and England.<\/p>\n

South Africa have inspired a change in how coaches look at the make-up of the 23 after back-to-back Rugby World Cup triumphs.<\/p>\n

During their 2019 victory in Japan, they regularly went with a split of six forwards and two backs on the bench before at times going with an even more daring 7-1 four years later.<\/p>\n

The likes of England<\/a> and France have followed suit and it paid off for the former as they claimed a 33-19 victory over New Zealand<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Traditional All Blacks<\/p>\n

New Zealand have stuck with tradition, however, and remain convinced that 5-3 is the way to go, but Marshall<\/a> is not so sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole 6-2 split, we just don\u2019t want to do it and I\u2019ve been banging this drum; for f*** sake, why do we not want to be innovative and go, \u2018righto we\u2019re going to go 6-2 or 7-1?\u2019,\u201d he said on the GBRANZ podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen England with their \u2018Pom Squad\u2019 did what they did, the game dynamic changed. They got real energy out of that, whereas we still put them on in dribs and drabs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they injected five into the game in one fell swoop and their energy levels went up. That was the intent right from the start, we knew that early in the week because he named his team early.\u201d<\/p>\n

All Blacks legend slams \u2018disrespectful\u2019 England fans for Haka response<\/a><\/p>\n

England boss Steve Borthwick took the risk of putting some of his big hitters among the replacements but former Wales and Lions number eight Andy Powell, who joined Marshall on the show, credited the strength of their squad.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Henry] Pollock, [Tom] Curry, [Ellis] Genge, [Will] Stuart, they\u2019re massive names who should be starting. It shows the strength that England have got, it\u2019s probably the best England squad they\u2019ve had since the 2003 World Cup \u2013 unbelievable players,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Hybrid players<\/p>\n

Going with a forward-heavy bench can expose a team if they are unfortunate with injuries during a game, but the likes of Rassie Erasmus and Borthwick have started to look at hybrid players \u2013 those who can both play in the forwards and the backs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can emulate that but we don\u2019t want to. We want to carry that extra back reserve and I don\u2019t understand why when we\u2019re supposed to have these players that can play across the backline,\u201d Marshall added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can play multiple positions. If we got really in the s***, you could put Ardie [Savea] in the midfield, you could put him on the wing, and he would do a good job of it wouldn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we feeling like South Africa are getting it wrong when they do it? England are getting it wrong when they do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Murray Mexted: \u2018Super Rugby\u2019s level is not as high as it was\u2019 after exit of South African teams and how it\u2019s impacted the All Blacks<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Blacks great Justin Marshall has urged Scott Robertson to rethink his view on the bench after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,818,1182,1736,44,760,85],"class_list":["post-295484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295484","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=295484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}