Kick off- 7.05pm, Saturday July 4One NZ Stadium, ChristchurchLive blog updates on RNZ <\/p>\n
After a period of upheaval, new coach Dave Rennie is bringing clarity back to the All Blacks.<\/p>\n
From the assistant coaching turnstile to a shifting selection strategy, the previous era under Scott Robertson was marked by uncertainty and turmoil.<\/p>\n
With a reputation for a no-nonsense approach, Rennie has wasted little time in outlining his direction to his troops ahead of the first test of the year against France in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
“Unbelievable. Tremendously clear on what he wants,” assistant coach Jason Ryan said, when asked how he would describe the working environment under Rennie.<\/p>\n
“He is pretty strong in his messaging around what’s needed and what’s required. One of the things Rens has come in and driven is being brilliant at basics. We’ve put a lot of work into skill work in each area and for each player.”<\/p>\n
As well as bringing back the basics, Ryan said Rennie has been reminding the team of the responsibility that comes with wearing the black jersey.<\/p>\n
“We’ve dug in really deep to the All Black legacy over the last couple of days which has been really authentic and unique to the All Blacks, understanding it a little bit and who we want to be as a team, which has been really special actually having come from the last regime.”<\/p>\n
Ryan said the new regime had achieved a good balance of adopting new ideas while not throwing out the established playbook.<\/p>\n
“Like any team, coaches and the management team want to put their own sort of mark on things. There’s a lot of ownership being put on players around their point of difference. He’s driven that really hard. I think there’s a great feeling in the group.”<\/p>\n
The sole survivor from Robertson’s tenure, Ryan feared he would too be out of a job before Rennie opted to keep him onboard.<\/p>\n
“I just try and do my job the best that I can and there have been a few things, a few spanners thrown in there and a few different moving parts. Personally I’ve just stayed true to who I am and been lucky enough to get an opportunity with Rens and this crew and I’m really looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n
Ryan admitted it was a difficult time seeing his colleagues get the axe.<\/p>\n
“It’s well behind me now. There was a little bit of uncertainty obviously, but when I got the message from Rens it was pretty special and I was just focused on that. I want to coach my country and there’s no other team that I’d rather coach in the world than the All Blacks. It’s a special team.”<\/p>\n
Now with the coaching saga put to bed, Ryan and his fellow wise men turn their attention to the Nations Championship, and rebuilding some of the aura the All Blacks have lost in recent years.<\/p>\n
“The people are loving rugby in the city at the moment which is great. It’s been a while since the city’s had a world class arena like they’ve got now, so really looking forward to that, it’ll be a great occasion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kick off- 7.05pm, Saturday July 4One NZ Stadium, ChristchurchLive blog updates on RNZ After a period of upheaval,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-502058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502058","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=502058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}