{"id":563861,"date":"2026-08-09T15:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T15:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/563861\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T15:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T15:22:10","slug":"all-blacks-dave-rennie-calm-after-ragged-stormers-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/563861\/","title":{"rendered":"All Blacks: Dave Rennie calm after ragged Stormers win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not that the All Blacks have lost yet on his watch, but their opening tour performance against the Stormers<\/a> had such gaping holes in it and left more questions than answers about the readiness of New Zealand to compete in the test series that it had a whiff of a losing vibe about it.<\/p>\n

What, ultimately, made the nature of the game hard for Rennie to swallow was that the Stormers played exactly as predicted and yet the All Blacks still got lost<\/a> despite the predictability of the tactical pathway.<\/p>\n

\"DaveDave Rennie: “When we had the ball, we were really dangerous.” Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

But Rennie was circumspect after the game, composed in his assessment and barely a degree off his axis. He was deadpan, emotionless bar for a small flicker of pride that his team had the stomach for the fight and will be all the better for having been exposed to the realities of rugby Republic-style.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we had the ball, we were really dangerous,\u201d he said. \u201cWe knew they would bring a lot of line speed and in quite dewy conditions that made life difficult and we weren\u2019t quite clinical enough to really expose them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew they would come at us with their set-piece so we have to be better in these areas. We expected a lot of aerial attacks and again we didn\u2019t deal with that as well as we wanted. They were all things we expected and things we would have hoped to have dealt with better.\u201d<\/p>\n

That the All Blacks eked out a 38-21 win in the end was down to them showing a bit of old-fashioned pluck and accuracy.<\/p>\n

It also helped, too, that Peter Lakai did his best Ardie Savea impression and took off down the wing before flipping a Sonny Bill-esque back-handed offload to set up Leroy Carter for what proved to be the winning try.<\/p>\n

It was a magical moment from a young man who seems to never have a bad game. But the positive of Lakai\u2019s performance aside \u2013 and those of Anton Segner, Anton Lienert-Brown and Rieko Ioane<\/a>, who all pushed forward their claims for places in the test 23 \u2013 this was a raggedy, messy, frustrating night for the All Blacks<\/a> and one in which they failed to meet their own standards on too many fronts.<\/p>\n

This was not the sort of slick, dynamic, flowing performance that the All Blacks had hoped to open their tour with, and far from making any kind of statement, they simply intensified the Springboks\u2019 thinking that come the first test, they will try to break New Zealand\u2019s scrum, drive their lineout mauls and boot the ball to the heavens.<\/p>\n

Why would they do anything different when they saw an All Blacks backfield that couldn\u2019t win the ball in the air, or get their share of the scraps?<\/p>\n

Ioane ran superbly, Josh Moorby produced a delectable skilful moment with a one-handed pick-up off the floor at pace, and Carter was busy and effective, but between the three of them, and Beauden Barrett, they flapped around when the Stormers kicked high to them.<\/p>\n

\"AntonAnton Segner: “We don\u2019t need to be giving away those penalties.” Photo \/ SmartFrame<\/p>\n

The needless nature of many of the penalties was another hot-button topic, and strangely perhaps, it was Segner, going against the grain somewhat of his Teutonic roots, who upped the emotional ante on that front. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exactly at those times that we were our own worst enemy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to be giving away those penalties. We know how to defend the maul. We know how to scrum, it is just us doing our jobs and doing our jobs well and that should get rid of it because we didn\u2019t plan to give away that many penalties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you piggyback them down the field, the Stormers are good enough to make you pay with their maul. We will definitely review that thoroughly, have a good look at it and be better at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand\u2019s most respected rugby writers and columnists.<\/a> He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not that the All Blacks have lost yet on his watch, but their opening tour performance against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5263,8136,34596,13651,9635,23469,111,43,139,69,17357,277428,138234,117557,2951,6027],"class_list":["post-563861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-all","tag-blacks","tag-calm","tag-cape","tag-dave","tag-gregor","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paul","tag-ragged","tag-rennie","tag-stormers","tag-town","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563861","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=563861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}