Can someone tell me why they believe this All Blacks team doesn't have the talent to win the next World Cup? Ignore the way it is coached, the talent within the players that are in Super Rugby right now, currently. Because there seems to be a lot of people suggesting that "we just don't have players as good as ex-players", and quite frankly, I wanna press you about it.
We absolutely have the players to win the World Cup, if we play well and to our strengths. But I wouldn't say just on players alone we should be favourites, and even if we should be favourites based on players alone, we still wouldn't be anything close to more likely to win the World Cup than not, which is what a lot of people suggest (most not realising that even in the past we Typically haven't been odds on to win the World Cup, even when we have been favourites ).
In the past we have had the best players in the world; now we don't. In the past we have had great athletes that have great ball skills, composure and smarts, now we have players with a subset of those things, not all at once. Take jordan for example; most cullenesque player since Cullen in terms of being at the right place at the right time, and having the speed to capitalize. But he often struggles under pressure, can throw poor passes, makes poor decisions, can struggle under the defensive high ball. Then rieko. Amazing talent in many respects. But his rugby brain and skills under pressure are lacking at times. Havili, has great skills and rugby brain but without the strength and speed of midfielders if the past. Cane is not mcaw. Frizell is not kaino, even in his most kaino like traits, but he also doesn't read the game the same it have the same ball skills. Retallick isn't the player he used to be. And let's not forget that these amazing teams of the past often won by small margins.
Then you look at the rest of the world. Their passing and reading of the game in general is better than ours at the top level. Do you not see the beautiful passes they do and how they see and execute opportunities? Yeah our npc players who don't have the strength and speed to make it to the next level are more skillful on average than their equivalent European players. But not at the top level. And then look at the superior skillset of the front rowers if other teams.
The player pool able to compete at the top level is pretty small because you need the size. So how skillful we are in general is irrelevant. We can't throw in our small skillful lock. We've seen in the past; star super rugby players like jonno gibbes and Reuben Thorne, Xavier rush, Marty holah, and a whole host of locks who have played one or a few games for the all blacks, just don't cut it at the next level. So how good we are very much depends on how good the small group of players who have potential to compete at the international level. So it's not unlikely that this will vary quite a lot with time. The strength of rugby in the nation more generally is not a great predictor of success at the highest level.
But most importantly, it's easy to see fast and strong athletes and think we should win. But players like mcaw are more important, and they're less noticable. In other words players who have stamina, high work rates, smarts at the breakdown. And of course they have to be sufficiently big and strong. Other countries have these players in spades.
In summary, our players who have the potential to be top internationals are not as good as they used to be, other countries players are better than they used to be, and even when we were the best in the world we weren't more likely to win the World Cup than not.
We have players with some great attributes, but compared to the past they are not better than the opposition players in all attributes; therefore whether we win or not comes down to whether we do a better job than other teams at playing to our strengths, and of course more generally how good our coaching is compared to theirs.
