Hansen reveals his biggest All Blacks positive

Former All Blacks coach Sir Steve Hansen believes the emergence of Jordie Barrett at second five-eighth is the biggest positive to come out of 2022 for the All Blacks.

Barrett had been given few opportunities to play in the All Blacks midfield, having clocked significant minutes there for the Hurricanes in Super Rugby, with head coach Ian Foster preferring Barrett as a fullback.

However, he got his chance in 2022 and took it with some excellent performances, and Hansen believes Barrett deserves to be the first-choice No 12 in 2023.

“The biggest positive from 2022 was Jordie Barrett at second five-eighth,” Hansen told D’Arcy Waldegrave on Newstalk ZB.

“He’s the man we’ve been looking for for quite some time to fill in that slot. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s fast. He’s got a great passing game. A wonderful kicker of the ball. Defensively he loves to get in amongst it and make the big hits, and has the size to do it for you.

“He’s a wonderful communicator and both the 10s, whoever is playing, are going to benefit when they have a good 12 outside them who is prepared to communicate.

“He’s also a player that if nothing’s on you can just give it to Jordie and he’ll cart it, like back in the day with Ma’a [Nonu] and Sonny [Bill Williams] sometimes. He gives us that option too, because he’s such a big athlete.”

Barrett’s emergence in the midfield was one of the factors for the All Blacks recovering from their early struggles in 2022, as was the axing of assistant coaches John Plumtree and Brad Mooar, who were replaced by Jason Ryan and Joe Schmidt.

“They were tough decisions that had to be made but were made by Ian and the ship has turned itself around and I think they go into the World Cup with quite a bit of excitement,” Hansen said.

“They ended the year pretty positively. Apart from 10 minutes against England they really dominated that game. It all started earlier in the year against Ireland. I think people underestimated just how good they were. We didn’t play anywhere near how we wanted to.

“What they have encountered, and for this group it’s probably the first time ever, is a bit of adversity. And that adversity makes you hungrier, it makes you look at the mirror a lot harder and you start to have those inconvenient conversations that you don’t normally want to have and you can get away with not having them because you are winning.

“But when things are happening like they were, they’ve had to strip the whole thing back and have some really uncomfortable conversations. We’ve seen the changes that have come out of those conversations. We’ve also seen the players take some ownership and the coaching group take some ownership.

“I think they’ll be quietly satisfied. You’re never happy when you’re in the All Blacks, but they’ll be satisfied that they’ve made the progress they need to be going into this next block and then the World Cup.”