Justin Marshall still believes that there are serious question marks over the All Blacks despite their 3-0 series victory against France in the mid-year Tests.
While many observers have declared themselves satisfied with what they saw from Scott Robertson’s men versus an understrength French outfit, the 81-times capped former scrum-half has a different view.
Les Bleus left many of their best players at home and still managed to challenge New Zealand in the first and third Tests before the hosts eventually prevailed.
The All Blacks’ next challenge is the Rugby Championship which starts in mid-August and Marshall still believes that answers have not been provided.
All Blacks issues
“From an All Blacks perspective, they got to play all of their players apart from the ones who weren’t available through injury,” he said on the GBRANZ podcast.
“They got pushed in Test matches where they had to find an answer – the first Test and the last one. [But] I don’t know how to rate the All Blacks performances and where they’re at.
“The thing I’m really struggling with is to say: ‘This is where we’re at, this is clearly where we’re at and we’re good leading into the Rugby Championship’.
“I’m just not quite sure what our team’s going to look like for that Rugby Championship, and how we’re going to play. We still did struggle and leave a lot of points out there in those Test matches.”
The All Blacks go into the Rugby Championship looking to reclaim the title they lost to the Springboks last year.
It is once again likely to be a battle between those two great sides for the trophy in 2025, with the double header in New Zealand no doubt the decisive matches.
At the moment, Marshall does not believe that Robertson’s outfit are good enough to defeat South Africa and doubled down on his recent prediction.
“We’ll always look to be positive around the All Blacks and ultimately we will say we won three Test matches, we tried lots of players, we weren’t great but we were still good enough,” he said.
“When it comes to it, I got asked last week, should the All Blacks be playing the Springboks tomorrow, would we beat them?
“I thought to myself, ‘probably not, no’. I don’t think we would.
“People come out and go, ‘no, we would and when it’s the Springboks we front up and we would beat them’. Well, okay, but I’m basing it on the evidence of what we’ve been seeing.”
Improvement in the Rugby Championship
Marshall does agree that the All Blacks will be better in the Rugby Championship but the question is whether it will be enough to beat the Boks and win the title.
“People like to feel that way about the All Blacks and that they can lift [their performance]. I don’t doubt that they can lift when they will face stauncher challenges, like playing Argentina in Argentina, the Bledisloe Cup, which we will be looking to retain, and playing the world champions at home in back-to-back Test matches,” he added.
“I don’t think we are anywhere near. We’re operating around the 75 per cent mark at the moment so there’s a lot of growth in there.
“We will be better when those teams come across our path.”