Rennie on a "crazy" World Cup draw, and why a Bledisloe "dead rubber" is not one

All Blacks coach Dave Rennie spent the week doing two jobs: preparing his side for tonight's second Bledisloe Cup Test in Sydney, and reacting to a World Cup draw he called "crazy".

The draw

The draw for next year's World Cup, in Australia, sets up a likely quarter-final between the All Blacks and the Springboks, with the winner meeting France in the semifinals. That would send one of the two best teams in the world home before the last four. It echoes 2023, when the top four teams in the world at the time, France, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand, all met in the quarterfinals, sending Ireland and France home and leaving one-sided semifinals.

"It just highlights a crazy draw," Rennie said. He pointed out that at the football World Cup the top four ranked sides had met in the semifinals, and called it hard to believe the All Blacks could face South Africa in a quarterfinal with the winner then playing France.

Rennie was philosophical about it too. The draw is "probably similar to the World Cup before", he said, and to win the title a team has to beat everyone anyway: "that's the path in front of us". The All Blacks open their campaign against Chile on 2 October next year, and Australia and New Zealand will meet in a World Cup pool for the first time.

The Test in Sydney

The match tonight at Accor Stadium, at 6pm New Zealand time, has been called a "dead rubber" because the Bledisloe Cup is already secured after the 50-19 win at Eden Park last Saturday. The All Blacks do not see it that way. "The cup's secure, but we still want to be better," Rennie said. The side talks a lot about "black standard", he explained; it was good last week, with a lot of good things done, but he thinks it can be better still.

He is wary of a response from the Wallabies. "They're too good a side to lie down," he said, and they will be playing at home in front of a massive crowd.

The side, and a defence of the break

Damian McKenzie starts at first five-eighth again, extending a run of 36 Tests in a row, after an impressive night at Eden Park. McKenzie said the coaches have given him "somewhat of a free license" on attack, though not licence to run the ball recklessly; he called it "a fine balance". Codie Taylor captains the team, and George Bower, Fabian Holland and Josh Moorby come into the starting fifteen, the three changes behind the headline eight.

Rennie also used the week to defend how he managed the players after the 3-1 series loss in South Africa. There had been criticism that the squad was not thrown straight into the NPC; he said that showed "a lack of awareness" of the physical and emotional toll of seven weeks of playing and travelling in Africa. The group, he said, had been "pretty shattered" when they got home, and he was "really happy" with how they responded at Eden Park.

The All Blacks are without Leroy Carter, Anton Segner, Asafo Aumua, Ethan Blackadder, Richie Mo'unga and Fehi Fineanganofo for the Sydney Test. Whatever the World Cup bracket looks like, the next 80 minutes are the ones that count tonight.