Coach Dave Rennie has cleared the air about why some players have not yet featured on the All Blacks tour in South Africa. From their first game against the DHL Stormers, fans had names they wanted to see but did not. Some expressed their frustration with Rennie’s selection choices.
However, ahead of their game against the Sharks, Rennie has cleared the air for good, answering all the questions.
WHY LOMAX AND SOME PLAYERS HAVE NOT PLAYED FOR THE ALL BLACKS SO FAR?
Among the absent players is the All Blacks’ all-time top try scorer in test rugby, Will Jordan, alongside star prop Tyrel Lomax.
“Yeah, reasonably, well, we got a couple of guys with niggles. So Tyrel Lomax, who we think should be right by Saturday, and Xavier Numia were the same. And Will Jordan’s just had a little bit of a crook back. The plan was to play him [Jordan] in this game, but he’ll play the Bulls. So yeah, I mean the only other one I think was Codie Taylor, who we also think he should be right for the Bulls game too.” Rennie said, speaking ahead of their game against the Sharks.
DAVE RENNIE LOOKS AHEAD TO A BETTER GAME IN DURBAN
After addressing the injury issue, Rennie also expressed his belief in why the All Blacks will do a better job in Durban.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who have never played over here, and you can talk about the challenges you’re going to face up front, and so you don’t really understand it until you experience it. So, look, we’re confident we’ll do a better job. We’ll do a better job staying in front of them all; we did do better in the second half, and the scrum stuff we can tidy up, and we just weren’t clinical enough on the edge,” he said.
“We created a lot of opportunities, and a couple of them were three-on-ones, and five-on-twos type of thing, and we didn’t nail it. So, we’ll spend a little bit of time on the high ball. I don’t think we caught one, so it’s gonna it’s gonna be important for us. We will take a lot of lessons from it, but it will require plenty of effort. As I mentioned, when we were down 13, the boys banded up for each other, and we finished strong. We were a lot more clinical when it mattered. We played at a tempo that, if we can be accurate, then we can stress the opposition,” he finished.