A Cap Analysis
How good was that All Blacks team against Ireland in Chicago?
We enjoyed the game with friends and obviously now with our fellow Dutchman Fabian Holland starting to cement his place in the team with additional interest. We thought it was funny to ask him in the post match interview about that 2016 Chicago game: he was 12 years old back then…. Will tell some more on his story in another post!
Match highlights
Great how that young NZLD team took control in that second half, put the foot on the gas and with more forward punch won that game.
Cap Analysis
I had just told our friends the story of how I discussed the follow up of the The TRS Rugby Summit Amsterdam 2025 with one of the RC Wageningen coaches and how they made a Gap Analysis against the presented ideas – yes, “Gap” not “Cap”.
Scott Robertson mentioned the experience in the team with the seniors and the young talent around them. That remark was interesting and I asked my network what the count was. The timestamps of the caps is not exact, but …
- Start with 720 + 193 on the bench = 913
- After 3 minutes = 640
- After 16 minutes = 571
- After 49 minutes = 557
- After 60/65 minutes – 551 (only because McKenzie added 70 caps)
So it dropped a bit during the game! Beauden Barrett (142), Savea (105), Taylor (103), Scott Barrett (88) and Jordy Barrett (77) have the most caps – this translates to those five players account for 515 of the 720 starting caps (72%).
After the 65th minute it was down to Beauden Barrett (142), Savea (105) en McKenzie (70), resulting in just three players accounted for mor than half of the remaining caps. To add some context: for the RWC 2015 RWC final, Richie, Dan, Kieran, Tony, Ma’a and Conrad added about the same number of caps as the total team against Ireland.
So a very young under capped NZLD team ended Ireland’s 17 game winning streak!
Succession Plan: building the squad – cap count
Interesting to ask: you need experienced players, but if you keep them on for too long there will be a big drop like that in currently in Wales. So what is a good mix? Rassie / RSA trialing a lot of players this summer, when to stop doing that and start building? A succession plan must surely be a thing for these coaching staffs! Is this where Scott’s time with the Crusaders becomes his strength?
What do you think of this? Do you have a succession plan for your team? Made a Gap/Cap Analysis already? Or perhaps an even better question: do you think Ireland could use the freshness of some new young talent? Are we as a coaches too conservative and hang on to the big cap players too long?
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