Sir John Kirwan: Four key areas All Blacks must fix after Scott Robertson’s side ‘became quite predictable’ in shock loss

Sir John Kirwan has highlighted where it went wrong for the All Blacks during their surprise home defeat to Argentina.

New Zealand are still finding their way under head coach Scott Robertson, but few predicted that they would be beaten by the South American outfit.

It was a step backwards from what they produced against England – a team higher up in the World Rugby rankings than Los Pumas.

Kirwan felt that they let themselves down in key areas in Wellington and noted what the All Blacks need to improve on heading into the second Rugby Championship clash with the Argentinians.

Number one issue

“For me, there are four things that I think we should be looking at,” he told The Breakdown. “Our exit strategy [is number one]. The exit strategy is how you get out of pressure, how you get out of your own half.

“The problem that I’ve got with our exit strategy is that it is currently to field competitive kicks, landing in our own half and try to compete for them.

“On Saturday, and for the whole series so far, that’s not working. TJ [Perenara] won’t be happy with his performance but, even when we’re there, you’re not getting out of your own half.

“If you’re not competitive [in the air] then you don’t get out of your half. That would be the first thing that I think we should look at.

“Does this suit our game? If you’re going to have an exit strategy with competitive high balls, do you look at selection and who your best high ball catchers are?

“I personally don’t like the exit strategy. I don’t mind it occasionally when you’re competitive, but I don’t like exit strategies where we’re not actually getting them in their own half.”

All Blacks legends blame lack of scrums for ‘throwing us off our game’

Their ‘exit’ issues were also linked to Kirwan’s next concern, which was their attack. The All Blacks were outscored by Argentina, who touched down four times compared to the hosts’ three.

“The second thing is the attack. When we attacked, we actually attacked well but, because we couldn’t exit, we didn’t get those opportunities. We became quite predictable,” he said.

“Our front-rows were not giving those little passes, so they were getting off the line and smacking us, keeping us in our half.”

Kirwan also had worries defensively, with players slipping off too many tackles. To counteract that, Kirwan almost suggested a slightly selfish mindset from each individual when it came to putting their body on the line.

“The one thing you can control as a player is you,” he said. “I think the individual tackle, every player in the All Blacks needs to go, ‘I’m wearing the jersey this week, no one’s going to get past me. This week, it doesn’t matter what happens, one-on-one tackle, I’m really going to nail it’, because you can control it and it’s easy to control.”

Leadership

Kirwan’s final area was quite simply leadership. Ardie Savea took on the captaincy in the absence of Scott Barrett, who did a fine job over the first three Tests.

Savea was one of the better All Blacks on Saturday but, when it came to the crunch, the number eight made a catastrophic error.

His errant pass sent the hosts into reverse and, after it was exacerbated by Damian McKenzie’s similarly poor decision-making, the visitors were awarded a five-metre scrum.

That set up the attack from which Agustin Creevy touched down to move Los Pumas 35-30 in front, a lead they would not relinquish.

Argentina then managed the final few minutes superbly, but they were helped by the New Zealand lineout going awry.

“My fourth point is, what are the learnings for Ardie, Jordie [Barrett], possibly Beauden [Barrett], Damian and Codie [Taylor]? Whether you like it or not, they’ve been in the leadership group, but they haven’t been the leaders.

“That last lineout, if Sam Whitelock was there, he would have had three options, we would have won that lineout. In the end, what happened was miscommunication and we lose the lineout at the back in a critical moment.

“The lineout was really good besides that one – when we needed to win it to win the game. That is a leadership thing.

“The leadership needs to go away this week and go, ‘okay, do we need to have a really serious conversation with the coaches because we’re doing too much?’

“And also, ‘what did we learn? What should we have done in that last lineout? What should we have done in the last 15 minutes?’”

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