All Blacks<\/a> number eight, particularly focused on the loose trio and looked back at the Chiefs v Hurricanes clash, where he felt the visitors perhaps lacked a bit of balance.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m a bit worried about the Hurricanes because it\u2019s bloody hard when you\u2019ve got two guys that aren\u2019t really big enough \u2013 Kirifi and Lakai aren\u2019t really big enough to play six or eight, they\u2019re both really a seven \u2013 but they\u2019re good rugby players,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Super Rugby level, which is one step down from when the South African teams were involved, you can get away with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go that next step and you can\u2019t get away with it, you get exposed. You don\u2019t get the ball and everybody cries until Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunting and gathering is still the expression you\u2019ve got to coin for an openside flanker and to a degree, a number eight these days. It\u2019s all about the ball, it really is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the Hurricanes got away with the lack of size in the loose forwards because the selection of the Chiefs changed \u2013 you took out a 1.95m blindside flanker (Samipeni Finau).\u201d<\/p>\n
Uncapped rising stars<\/p>\n
With Kirifi and Lakai on the smaller side, Devan Flanders has become an even more important factor in that Hurricanes back-row.<\/p>\n
Flanders has received rave reviews this season and he was one of two uncapped players namechecked by Mexted in regards to Test selection this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was quite interested to see Flanders because Flanders is a ball winner and he\u2019s 1.93m, so he\u2019s just a little bit smaller than Boshier. That\u2019s why I think those two guys should be considered very seriously [by Rennie],\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re big enough, they\u2019ve got aerial possession ability to play against anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Dave Rennie completes All Blacks management group as \u2018secret ingredient\u2019 from Steve Hansen\u2019s \u2018golden era\u2019 returns<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former All Blacks number eight Murray Mexted insists that there is more to selection than Super Rugby and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1463,1464,131691,111,43,139,69,1466,213,82286],"class_list":{"0":"post-393571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-home-page","9":"tag-internationals","10":"tag-murray-mexted","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-south-africa","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-super-rugby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}