Selectors will say their eyes and minds are always open. They are, that's true, but the year after a World Cup is always a little different and 2020 will see a new All Blacks selection group scour Super Rugby particularly hard.
There's a number of reasons for that. Firstly, the All Blacks, like most other countries, saw a reasonable cleanout of senior personnel after the last World Cup.
Kieran Read, Ben Smith, Sonny Bill Williams, Ryan Crotty and Matt Todd who were all in Japan at the World Cup, have gone offshore. So too have Owen Franks and Jackson Hemopo who were in the test squad last year prior to the World Cup cull being made.
Others such as Liam Squire, Luke Whitelock, Nehe Milner-Skudder and Matt Proctor who were regular All Blacks or on the fringes in 2018 have also gone and of course, Brodie Retallick is unavailable this year due to his decision to have a sabbatical in Japan.
There is, then, an obvious supply and demand issue. The team has to be rebuilt to some extent and that fact alone obviously sharpens the selectors' need to be vigilant and focused throughout Super Rugby.
But there's a deeper sense of a post-World Cup year being one of significant opportunity to cast the selection net that bit wider and find the next generation of legacy players.
Think back to 2012 and the first squad of the year contained a handful of young players who were not, at that stage, particularly well known but have gone on to be the bedrock of the current side.
New caps in June that year included Retallick, Sam Cane, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith and Julian Savea. Later Dane Coles came into the squad and five of them remain integral to the All Blacks fortunes and probably will do so through to 2023.
This story is from the Issue 204 , February - March 2020 edition of NZ Rugby World.
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This story is from the Issue 204 , February - March 2020 edition of NZ Rugby World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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