Super Rugby Pacific<\/a> season due to injuries, with Holland sustaining a shoulder injury in a pre-season hit-out and Barrett running into back trouble as he looked to return from a non-playing sabbatical in May.<\/p>\nBut with both back on their feet in time for the Bledisloe Cup, the All Blacks were finally able to see the two workhorses\u00a0in tandem in Sydney. And the coaches liked what they saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019d probably say that starting front row and the two locks, with Scott Barrett back in and Fabian Holland, was massive for us yesterday,\u201d Ryan told Jason Pine on Newstalk ZB on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFabian was huge, and he\u2019s had a bit of a mixed season. He had a big injury and didn\u2019t play Super Rugby at all. A little bit of shoulder reconstruction and a bit of work there. He\u2019s coming back into his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what he\u2019s capable of. It takes time to get your confidence right and come back and get right into Test footy, but I think last night he was like, \u2018yeah, I\u2019ll take this, thanks\u2019. And he did. We\u2019re getting a few big bodies back up front\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I think just on Scott Barrett, I think it\u2019s a massive reward, firstly, for what he\u2019s done and how he\u2019s rehabbed his body. He\u2019s really needed it. I noticed him, and I actually said to him when he ran out at Eden Park, he just had this massive smile on his face, and it was like he said, \u2018it was almost like my first game\u2019, you know?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of relief in the role that he\u2019s got, I guess, which is natural. You\u2019re going to feel that, and let\u2019s just play some footy. And also, he does know now that his body is genuinely right. So, I think it\u2019s under 12 months now from a World Cup, and we would have loved to have taken him over to South Africa, but it wasn\u2019t to be. But we\u2019ve still got them another couple of times yet, and potentially next year at the World Cup. So, yeah, it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan was impressed by more than just the second row, with his scrum operating at 100 per cent across the two-Test series. New Zealand\u2019s starting front row has been relatively consistent this season, with Ethan de Groot and Codie Taylor starting when fit, while Fletcher Newell and Tyrel Lomax have shared the starting tighthead responsibilities. The bench, though, has seen more rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose boys, they\u2019ve learned a bit in the last wee while, to be fair, and I think that they are connecting with each other really well and scrummaging well as a unit,\u201d Ryan added. \u201cAnd we have got that bit of mobility and a little bit of power that can come on with those three.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019ve got to make sure that if we do bring them on, we\u2019ve got that balance of our game right, so that we\u2019re not cooking them too much. And I think that will be something that we can reflect on, because I think the ball in play (time), I haven\u2019t seen the stats yet, but I\u2019d say it\u2019s probably the biggest ever off the top of my head. Sometimes the ball wasn\u2019t even touching the ground, was it? She was pretty quick.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: 13 hours ago | 20 October 2026 00:37 EDT mens international Fabian Holland of the All Blacks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-636505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636505","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=636505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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