Murray Mexted doubles down on All Blacks’ ‘big problem’ against Scotland which also ‘worries’ him ahead of England clash

David Skippers 12 Nov 2025 11:40 AM

Murray Mexted has reiterated the importance of tall loose forwards for the All Blacks when they take on England in Saturday’s Autumn Nations Series Test at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham.

This is a topic which the legendary All Blacks number eight has highlighted on several occasions over the past year and although All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson has introduced the likes of regular lock Tupou Vaa’i and Simon Parker in his back-row in 2025, he opted for short loose forwards in Ardie Savea, Wallace Sititi and Peter Lakai to start their last Test against Scotland at Murrayfield with Savea the tallest of that loose trio at 1,90 metres.

The All Blacks made a bright start to that game and raced into a 17-0 lead at half-time before Scotland launched a fightback after the interval and drew level at 17-17 by the hour-mark before backline replacement Damian McKenzie scored a try and slotted a penalty in the final quarter to secure a 25-17 triumph for the men in black.

And Mexted, who made 34 Test appearances for New Zealand between 1979 and 1985, believes Scotland took advantage of the All Blacks’ lack of length in their back row, which helped them to come storming back in the second half.

“I reckon we had the smallest loose forward trio, the shortest loose forward trio in the world that played last week,” Mexted told DSPN with Martin Devlin.

“I think in the ’70s, we might have had two players that were short. I think Alex Wiley had the number eight berth at that stage.

“There were a lot of guys that were just openside flanker size, and that’s what we’ve actually got at the moment. Now, you can’t play the game where possession is king if you’ve got three loose forwards who are short, unless somebody else is winning ball. Now, my big problem with the game against Scotland is we’re up 17-0 at half-time.

“Pretty impressive, wasn’t it? 17-0 at half-time, you know, and I thought that’s pretty good. What happened in the second half is the Scots came back. Now, why they came back, there are a number of reasons for that.

“One, we may have let them back into the game. That’s one reason. Number two, they won a hell of a lot more ball than us.

So, at half-time, we’d won 53% of the ball. At the end of the game, the Scots had won 53% of the ball, and we’d won 47%. So, we didn’t win enough.

“So, we played Scotland at Edinburgh. So, if you’re an All Black team, and you go away, and you want to beat every team in the world like we’ve wanted to for 100 years, then you’ve got to go to their ground, with their atmosphere and with sort of local referees.

“When I say local referees, you know, there may be English referees who are used to refereeing in the Northern Hemisphere, different from the rugby (in the) Southern Hemisphere.

“There’s lots of things that favour the home team.

‘You’ve got to get more than your share of possession’

“So, to go and beat the home team, you’ve got to get more than your share of possession. You have to get over 50%. So, against Scotland, we only got 47%.

“So, you’d have to say ‘Is that enough?’ Absolutely not. Is it good enough for an All Black team? Absolutely not.

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“Are we going to beat everybody if we get 47% of the ball? Probably not. So we need to get more ball. So, how do you get more? And you’ve got three loose forwards who are all sort of really good with the ball in hand, but they’re not winning much ball in the air.

“Now, by half-time, the Scots had worked out that we only had two guys in the line-out. So, they started throwing it towards the back. So, most of their ball was won at the back of the line-out by this guy called Brown, you know? And he was, I don’t know, Gregor Brown.

“Now, that sounds pretty bloody Scottish to me. So, I looked up the stats on him. He’s been around for a while.

“He’s only 24, but he played for Scotland U20s. And, you know, he’s about 1 metre 94, I think. So, he’s tall.

“And that’s where they were winning ball. They were winning ball at the back of the line-out, which is really dangerous ball because you open up the short side. And so, I think that was the problem, was the possession factor.

“And of course, the game is influenced by decisions that are made by the referee, whether they’re good or bad. It doesn’t matter. Decisions are made.

And I thought (referee) Nick Berry, I thought he had a great first half. I thought he had a terrible second half. And why that was, I don’t know.

“There’s another reason, too. I think, you know, not only did the Scots work out that we were short a line-out forwards and moved it to the back, but they also contested the ball in the air. They didn’t kick the ball out.

“We were kicking the ball out in the end. And the line-out count at the end, they beat us in the line-outs total. It was 13-10, I think it was, in line-outs.

“So, there’s a lot wrong with what we did. One little thing I want to add, too. It’s possible that this team, this team is quite a young team.

“And the game they played on the weekend against Murrayfield, there are a lot of players that are pretty new to the game at that level. Now, I’m a great believer in mental strength.

“And I’m wondering whether we have the mental strength at the moment.

‘That showed me that we’ve got character’

“So you go out, you win the first half 17-0, you come in and you lose the second half. You know, in the end, we made a fight, a comeback at the end. So that showed me that we’ve got character.

“That showed me we’ve got spirit. But the first 20 minutes or 25 minutes of the second half, Scotland beat us. There’s no doubt.

We were up 17-0.”

The All Blacks are chasing a Grand Slam and after beating Ireland and Scotland in the first two Tests of that campaign, they still have England and Wales to face before completing that campaign.

They are up against England at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham on Saturday, and Mexted feels they can’t head into that encounter with the same tactics which they used against Scotland.

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“You’ve got to be able to shut a team out. And, you know, we’re up by, they (Scotland) had no points at half-time,” he said.

“We had 17. We had to start that second half like we started the first half and just dominate and shut them out of the game.

“But we didn’t. So I don’t think we were mentally tuned like we were at the beginning of that game. So that might question their mental skills.

“So that’s a factor that has to be looked into. Right now we’re heading down the road to England.

“Now everyone knows when you play England at Twickenham, it’s not easy. It is a hard game. Very, very hard.

“It’s hard for everybody. It’s hard for the touch judges. It’s hard for the referees.

“It’s hard for the coaches. It’s hard for the players. It’s just the way it is.

“It’s a great stadium. It’s a wonderful stadium, possibly the world’s best rugby stadium. And it’s a hard place to win.

“And our record at Twickenham is not as good as it is everywhere else in the world. So I think that we’re going to have a challenge on our hands.

“They’re going to have four guys in their forward pack that are over two metres tall. Now, if we play the same team that played against Scotland, we’ll have two guys that are over two metres.

“So you can’t tell me by half-time they would have worked out where they can throw the ball in the line-out or where they can kick the ball at kick-off time.

“So it’s aerial possession that worries me. If England beat us in possession at Twickenham, they’ll beat us on the scoreboard as well.”

England