All Blacks making no excuses for complicated travel arrangements ahead of Munster clash

Further reinforcements from the All Blacks senior squad may yet join the All Blacks XV group for Saturday's game against Munster. 

NO STRANGER: Clayton McMillan coaching the Maori All Blacks during a 2022 match against Ireland at the FMG Stadium in Hamilton, New Zealand. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

New Zealand’s All Blacks XV tourists will finally get their training week underway as a full squad at Garryowen FC’s Dooradoyle grounds on Tuesday as they begin preparations in earnest for Saturday’s Thomond Park clash with Munster.

Head coach Clayton McMillan saw the final elements of playing pool assemble in Limerick on Monday, the main group having arrived into Shannon on Sunday afternoon while two further pods from Scott Robertson’s Test squad and also participants in last Saturday’s NPC final between Wellington and Bay of Plenty augmented the initial 19-strong group of players having flown in 24 hours later.

McMillan, who as Chiefs head coach worked with current Munster players Alex Nankivell and John Ryan, is no stranger to touring Ireland having brought an All Blacks XV team to Dublin to face Ireland A at the RDS two years ago and he was making no allowances for the complicated travel arrangements ahead of this weekend’s sell-out tour match.

“It’s a long way to come, over here,” McMillan told the Irish Examiner on Monday. 

“We still haven’t got our whole group here but we’ll all be here by tonight and then we’ll get into our work so no excuses from our end, we’ll just get on with it. We’re grateful to be here.

“We just assembled on Friday and then departed on Saturday morning. We’ve got players coming from a number of different areas, some that have been with the All Blacks in Japan and who travelled over to London yesterday and a handful of those players will be joining us.

“We’ve got guys that played in our NPC final on Saturday afternoon, they left around midday on Sunday and they’ll arrive here later tonight but the majority, around 19 players have been with us from Friday afternoon. We’ve managed to have at least one walk through and we’ll do the same again this afternoon with a few more bodies, then get into our proper training tomorrow.” 

McMillan, who also serves as head coach of the Maori All Blacks, was on Monday morning waiting for confirmation of the personnel he could expect to be released from the senior squad following Saturday’s emphatic 64-19 Test win over Japan in Yokohama.

“We’re still waiting to hear from the All Blacks around a couple of players but we’ve had three or four guys that were originally named in our squad that travelled with the All Blacks as additional training bodies and who were there in the event of injury.

“Bradley Slater, Oliver Haig, Christian Lio-Willie, AJ Lam, Fabian Holland, Harry Plummer, they were with the All Blacks and may need to stay with them but one of the ideas around us coming up to this part of the world was to be in the same region as the All Blacks so there can be a bit of cross-pollination between teams where there’s a need.

“Whenever you pull a group together and you have limited time you want to keep things pretty basic. There are some good players selected in our team so we just back that if we provide a pretty basic blueprint around how we think we can take on Munster and then just allow them to go out and express themselves and play what they see in front of them and their quality will ensure that we put on a good performance.”