Steve Hansen has shown his hand, then, and it includes three changes to the side who beat Samoa 78-0 last week. At least one of them was easy to see coming. Kieran Read is back at No8 – as everyone knew he would be. But the other two have caught a few by surprise. Ryan Crotty is in at outside centre, ahead of Anton Lienert-Brown. And in the biggest twist, the 20-year-old Rieko Ioane starts on the left wing. Julian Savea, who has scored 46 tries in 53 Tests, the last of them only last weekend, did not even make it on to the bench. Given that Read has hardly played this year and has only just recovered from a broken thumb, Crotty is back from a rib cartilage injury and that both missed the match against Samoa, there’s a little more rust on this All Blacks XV than Hansen might like.
Ioane, on the other hand, is in because he is in such glittering form. Young as he is, they have been talking about him for a long while here in Auckland. He made his debut for New Zealand’s sevens team when he was 17, only three months after he graduated from Auckland Grammar. He is from a rugby family. His father Eddie played for Samoa and his mother Sandra for New Zealand’s women’s team, the Black Ferns. He and his older brother Akira grew up around Ponsonby RFC, where their parents both work, Eddie as a coach, Sandra as an administrator. So the nature v nurture debate does not really figure much when it comes to Rieko Ioane. He has got both going for him. He has plenty of pace but, just as important, is a good man under a high ball.
Hansen has been talking up Ioane at every opportunity. He mentioned him, unprompted, when he was asked about Waisake Naholo’s chances of playing in this game and then again when he was asked about Israel Dagg and Savea’s performances against Samoa. He has been in fine form for the Auckland Blues this season, with 10 tries in 14 games, and another against the Lions in the first midweek match of this tour, when he turned Jack Nowell inside out, over and again. But he played against the Lions for the Maori, too, and had a quiet match. And this is going to be a leap up again for a kid who has only ever made two substitute appearances in Test rugby, against Italy and France last autumn.
The decision to leave out Savea can be taken one of two ways. It is either a mistake, especially given that the magnitude of the occasion and the wet conditions are likely to mean his experience would have come in handy, or a marker of just how ruthless this All Blacks team are. Savea only needs to score four more tries to overtake Doug Howlett and become the All Blacks’ record try-scorer in Test rugby. Given that he gets them at a rate of more than 0.85 per Test, a ratio unmatched by almost any other top try-scorer in history, he would not have needed long to do it. But the best winger in the world is not good enough for the All Blacks’ bench right now.
Ioane is not the only link in the XV the Lions will be looking to test. Crotty is a fine, smart player – “heady”, Hansen called him – but he has only started two games for the All Blacks at outside centre, against Samoa and the USA. Usually he is in at No12, where he regularly plays for the Crusaders. And those two Tests, both back in 2015, were also the only matches in which he has started alongside Sonny Bill Williams, who Hansen has picked at inside centre against the Lions. Lienert-Brown had a good game against Samoa, better than Williams did. Hansen mentioned after that match that his centres had made the mistake of “maybe offloading too much” and it was not Lienert-Brown he was talking about. Williams gave away possession on a couple of occasions.
However, like Ioane, Williams tore a few holes in the Lions when they lost to the Blues and Hansen seems to have put a lot of stock in that match. He has described the first Test as a “battle of contrasting styles” and, in Williams and Ioane, has picked a couple of players who have already experienced, and succeeded against, this Lions team. Williams’s offloading game, his willingness to take risks, will be key against the Lions’ rush defence, which stifled the Crusaders and the Maori. Still, between Dane Coles’s injury, Read’s rustiness, Ioane’s inexperience and that unpractised centre pairing, an optimistic Lions fan might think that this All Blacks team is just a touch more vulnerable than it might have been. The All Blacks would say that is a deluded view. On Saturday we will see who is right.
New Zealand squad for first Test
Ben Smith, Israel Dagg, Ryan Crotty, Sonny Bill Williams, Rieko Ioane, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith; Joe Moody, Codie Taylor, Owen Franks, Brodie Retallick, Sam Whitelock, Jerome Kaino, Sam Cane, Kieran Read (capt).
Replacements Nathan Harris, Wyatt Crockett, Charlie Faumuina, Scott Barrett, Ardie Savea, TJ Perenara, Aaron Cruden/Lima Sopoaga, Anton Lienert-Brown.
