If a player isn't on his feet inside three seconds, in Dave Rennie's world he has failed. That, according to Aotearoa Rugby Pod hosts Bryn Hall, Jeff To'omaga-Allen and Braden Wagner, is the selection rule that will define the All Blacks squad the returning head coach is preparing to name for the Test winter.
"You've got less than three seconds to get off the ground, otherwise you've failed at BIG. And you've got to hit BIG 85 per cent of the time," Hall explained, walking listeners through the back-in-game metric Rennie introduced at the Chiefs in 2012 and has carried through Glasgow, the Wallabies and now into his Japan project. The argument on the pod is that even though every coach now talks about BIG, Rennie weights it more heavily than anyone else — and that weighting shapes who gets picked.
Wagner, speaking from inside the system in Japan, said the metric is now scoreboard-posted in team reviews. "It gets put up in reviews around how much work you are doing off the ball, even if you are maybe making a tackle, how quick you can get up and be able to get repeated effort," he said, adding that the players' first instinct is to "go and see — where am I at? Where am I at? How much pain am I going to have this week?" — because falling short means extra running.
To'omaga-Allen made the case that the discipline rewires a player's mindset. "It's not a lung capacity thing, it's being held in and around the ruck," he said. "You actually start training that as an attacking cleaner... it's a BIG stat, because you might be on the ground but you're lying on someone and you get up first. And it might have been two or three seconds, but you're still up."
The trio then worked through their reading of the current Super Rugby Pacific top performers per 80 minutes — the names, they argued, Rennie cannot ignore. The Hurricanes dominated the front-row picks: Asafo Aumua, Du'Plessis Kirifi and Pita Gus Sowakula were all flagged as elite BIG performers. "Asafo Aumua is probably the best [hooker] like he's playing the best footy I think we've all seen, but man, he is fit. He is getting back in the game like no one else," Hall said.
Will Stuart-Te'o was singled out as the outright number one — "both sides of the ball, his back-to-back efforts are huge" — and the case was made that the metric is why he was picked ahead of Hoskins Sotutu in earlier squads. Christian Lio-Willie of the Crusaders, the Blues' Sam Darry, Highlanders prop Ethan de Groot, and Angus Ta'avao all earned mentions, with Fabian Holland flagged as another lock who fits the template even though injury has kept him out.
The backs, in the pod's reading, will be judged on the same yardstick. Hurricanes' Billy Proctor and Chiefs flyhalf Damian McKenzie's understudy Josh Ioane were name-checked, alongside Quade Cooper from Japan and Will Jordan, whose return for the Crusaders this weekend they argued lands at exactly the right time for Rennie's selectors. "Will Jordan and Alipate Tokelau from the Chiefs work around off the ball consistently — that would be two names in terms of the backs that I think have done really well in that kind of area," Wagner said.
The takeaway from the episode was that X-factor is not enough. Rennie's All Blacks, the hosts agreed, will be picked from the players who keep moving when the cameras have moved on — the ones who carry three times in five minutes and are still on their feet for the other 75.
