Foster plays it cool but Talea call rocks All Blacks prep

Mark Telea of the All Blacks runs through drills during a New Zealand All Blacks training session at INSEP training grounds on October 12, 2023 in Paris, France. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

All Blacks scrum-half Aaron Smith teed up their World Cup quarter-final meeting with Ireland by suggesting, rather simplistically, that whichever team can arrange most of their ducks in a row all week will get to spend the next two weeks here in France. If that’s the case then the three-time champions start on the back foot.

The decision to omit wing Mark Talea from the 23 for disciplinary reasons is not one that fits the picture of a squad dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘t’. Telea scored two brilliant tries against France in the opener and has been a major success for the Kiwis this last year.

His absence hurts.

Five times head coach Ian Foster was asked about his absence in the space of a 13-minute press conference. He was loathe to afford it the oxygen of too much air time and his captain Sam Cane and other players who spoke to the media had clearly been given the same brief.

“He breached the protocol, nothing major, but enough to keep him out of selection for this week,” said Foster at the team HQ on the shoulder of the Avenue de l‘Est motorway 25 miles north of the Eiffel Tower. “I still love him, he trained well, it happens.” 

It was an understandable and logical firefighting strategy. Foster would have known that these things can grow legs and the last thing he or the All Blacks need right now is a conflagration which would only serve to distract them from the rather crucial job at hand in Saint-Denis.

That much was evident midway through the press conference when he was asked if disciplinary reasons had anything to do with the absence of scrum-half Cam Roigard from the replacements bench. It wasn’t, he confirmed, but he was clearly annoyed at the question.

New Zealand have tried to trade heavily on the notion of a positive team culture down the years. The notion has attracted as many guffaws as plaudits at times and the head man was asked what Telea’s faux pas said about the team’s mindset with a big game on the horizon.

"You can say volumes,” said Foster who has replaced Telea with Leicester Fainga’anuku. “We believe in what we stand for and that speaks volumes for the team that we make that sort of decision in this sort of week."

The Kiwis were at least able to name first-choice tighthead Tyrel Lomax in the starting XV after doubts over his fitness and there was a surprise on the bench where they plumped for the youthful pair of Fletcher Newell and Tamaiti Williams rather than the more experienced Ofa Tu’ungafasi and Nepo Laulala.

The thinking seems to be that this points to a more mobile mindset and one directly attributable to the threat Ireland present around the park. If that’s the case then it is another example of the shifting relationship between these two sides.

Time and again Foster and his players have been asked about their supposed status as underdogs against a nation that couldn’t beat them for 111 years, until that meeting in Chicago in 2016. You can bet that this eats away at them but the mask remains in place in public as the day approaches.

“I don’t think the past matters,” said Foster. “You learn a lot from the past but you learn it at the time and it becomes part of who you are and it becomes part of us as a team. This team is ready, we’ve prepared well with this in mind.

“If you look at this year, the whole thing is about getting ready for a World Cup and making sure that we’re primed to perform at this stage of the tournament. We’re excited about it. We know the size of the challenge and how good Ireland are. They deserve all the plaudits they get but play-off rugby is about who’s best on the day.” 

To be fair to him, he dismissed the weight of history again when asked whether Ireland’s failure to make it past the quarter-final stages in the first nine tournaments might act as an anchor on Andy Farrell’s side as they strive to hit new heights.

Maybe he has learned that this isn’t a crew that can be spooked. Ireland have beaten all comers through a 17-game unbeaten run but you could argue that no opposing coach suffered at their hands more than Foster himself.

It still seems slightly remarkable that he remains in the role after the uproar that met their 2-1 series loss to Ireland two summers ago. Long gone are the days when a Kiwi coach could look down on the men in green. This is a game among equals.

“There's always respect among teams in the international game. So this is not just something from the last 12 months, it's something that's been brewing for the last five or six years in Ireland. They've done a superb job and earned the position they're in.

“Then when they get the upper hand on you a few times, naturally you respect them because it hurts. You've just got to take your hat off to their form, their run of wins. They've done well but again, we start the game at 0-0 and get stuck in. It should be a great game.”