Sports After Dark

I was going to write something about how the experiement of playing Steven Donald and Dan Carter as dual play makers was a failure, but Grant Fox over at Rugby Heaven beat me to it.

Sometimes you have to be brave enough to make big decisions. Graham Henry did that last night in Hong Kong when he hooked Steven Donald from the field in the fourth Bledisloe Cup clash.

It was the right decision. Donald will come again. But last night, the experiment of playing him in the No 10 jersey with Dan Carter in No 12 simply didn’t work.

Quite why you’d play the best first five in world rugby at second five is beyond me, but why not play Donald at second five?

Donald’s kicking game in the first half was not up to international standard.  His presence in the No 10 jersey was also tending to keep Carter out of the game.

Nor was his distribution and running. Carter doesn’t run often, but when he does he is able to freeze defensive lines, Donald just didn’t do this.

Combined with the urgency, superior cohesion and physical presence at the breakdown of a well-prepared Wallaby team, the All Blacks were looking vulnerable at the halftime break.

Actually, I think they were wondering just what the hell was going on out there, weren’t the Wallabies meant to be rusty?

With superior possession and territory stats, the All Blacks needed their key playmaker to command the ruck area - and that just wasn’t happening with Donald. So Henry’s hook came out.

Suddenly Carter was in the game more and the end result was a commendable win, giving us a 3-1 record over Australia this year.

Of course it helped that the Australia forwards started to tire and the All Blacks’ loosies got stuck into their work.

But you can’t deny the fact that Donald was found wanting in the pivot role in this game, perhaps a trial of Carter and Donald with their roles switched against Scotland would be in order. Donald is a damn good player and has all the qualities one looks for in an international first five, but he still needs some development to fully make the transition.

Similar Posts:

• Donald’s move to pivot role shows All Blacks ready to attack
• Henry’s master plan
• All Blacks ready for revenge against France in Cardiff
• Injuries expose All Blacks lack of depth at key positions
• All Blacks happy with World Cup build up

The Donald experiment just didn’t work by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.