Would the All Blacks been better off (match fitness) to have played a Friendly before the Rugby World Cup.?

Question

Would the All Blacks been better off (match fitness) to have played a Friendly before the Rugby World Cup.?

Answer 1

I don't think so. good thing the all blacks have the easiest pool in the world cup to get warmed up before the quarterfinals.

Answer 2

Its better to be underdone than over cooked.Countries round the world won't field a full strength side against the AllBlacks eg.France,England .SouthAfrica fielded 2nd string side this year purposely to try and wound our boys so it aint worth it.Its on the day at the CUP is where we go to work

Answer 3

They will get plenty of match fitness come the rugby World cup.  All they have to do is work on fine tuning what ever key areas they feel needs developing.  Have more than one game plan and be able to change it or over come the opposition when they do get into the harder part of the tournament.  The quarters, semis and eventually winning the finals.

Answer 4

No. Winning the tri-nations was enough.

All this talk about match fitness is c**p. Made up by the media and losing teams to sell news papers and defend a p**s poor performance.

Buck Shelford  and the 1987 world champs never cried about match fitness - and they played a fraction of the games now being played in the prof era.

The All Blacks are very lucky with their draw in pool C - all 4 pool matches will offer enough contact for the team to re-jell and build into the knock out rounds.

Answer 5

Professionals dont need more fittness its not like they are instantly fat, they need more game time for skills and unity, a few players played in the NPC, and its not like the all blacks will struggle in their group they can afford not to turn on the style until the semi's, the first 5 matches should be easy enough

Answer 6

No , They don't need to be playing any mindless friemdlies .. Just a waste of time . They have had a good lead up program with the eraly fixtures against France C and Canada and then stepped up with some goodd hard tri Nations games .. They have pretty well got things primed , The early World Cup pool games will be suitable to fine tune a few things ..

Answer 7

Maybe they would have.  It's not like they have been sitting around since the end of the Tri Nations though.  They played a Police team a couple weeks ago and had two 50 minute games in one day against a Auckland/North Harbour Barbarian team on the weekend.  Yes, those teams aren't up to the same level as Scotland, Wales etc, but they are proper games with contact etc.

The coaching staff have been building up to this WC for four years now.  As soon as they knew who was in our pool, they would have organised their warm up games.  No offence to Scotland and Italy, but NZ's pool is probably the weakest one in the WC.  Their toughest game will be the first one against Italy, but they are good enough to win that one with almost any build up... plus the excitement of finally getting it underway will help.  Having said that, I think the game will be A LOT closer than many expect, simply because Italy are better than a lot of people think, NZ will be a bit rusty and the excitement may lead to mistakes.

This will lead to all the other teams jumping all over NZ and the media having a field day... but to be honest, they are looking like being right on track and the rest of the games will allow players to be rested and people to step up their claim for a spot in the playoffs.

They face a QF against Ireland or Argentina which will be a good step up, a semi against Australia which is another step up and a final against South Africa or France, which IMO is another step up again, so they have a nice draw all around, although I'd prefer the Italy game to be later in the pool stage.