Nigel Starmer-Smith casts his eye over the key men who made
New Zealand tick at the IRB Junior World Championship in Argentina,
including one giant wing he's already compared with Jonah
Lomu…
It's easy to draw parallels between Tyler Bleyendaal and
last year's winning captain Aaron Cruden, who became an All
Black earlier this month. Tyler is off the same assembly line, I
thought he was absolutely outstanding. Ok, you look at his points
scoring and he got 28 points in the final, but it was his composure
throughout.
He's certainly in the same class and clearly they have
Dan Carter and they now have Aaron Cruden and I think this guy is
going to be knocking on the door soon. Inevitably, it's the
backs you expect to become young All Blacks, you can't expect
the forwards to make that final step until they are a bit more
mature.
Who else caught my eye? Julian Savea, the new IRB Junior
Player of the Year, was absolutely outstanding and he is the one I
guess who is nearest to stepping into an All Black side before a
year or two is out.
But the captain Bleyendaal, applauded by the crowd as he came
off before the end entirely appropriately, has wonderful vision,
beautiful hands and tactically varied his game wonderfully and was
very much the orchestrator of the remarkable New Zealand
performance against Australia in the final.
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New Zealand, though, were strong all round, and sometimes a
No.10 needs to thank his scrum half because I thought Tawera
Kerr-Barlow also looked a class act as well and interestingly, and
I think very sensibly in this tournament, Dave Rennie put them
together from the start, so by the time they came to the semi and
then the final they had played every time together and I think that
paid huge dividends given they were probably the best two in the
competition as a pair.
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Julian
Savea is that he doesn't bother to run round players or duck
inside them, he goes through them. I mean he is 16 stone 5, he is
wonderfully built, he has this great athleticism and power to go
with the speed and a total self confidence.
What I was pleased to see in the final was for once he
created a try which was probably in a way the best little bit of
individual skills in this tournament, when he went outside a wing
three quarters, cut back inside and then had the presence, control
and skill to offload one handed with his right hand a perfectly
weighted pass to his fly half Bleyendaal inside.
I thought that showed the guy isn't just a flying
bulldozer, he also has these subtle skills as well as the other
things that go with that - outstanding talent, 6ft 3 and knocking
on 16 and a half stone. This is a player who would I guess in my
book will be the next most likely All Black to come.
People, including myself, have referred to him as a
"smaller Jonah Lomu" and you can see why. I suppose ever
since Jonah Lomu came on the scene we've been looking for the
next one, but there hasn't really been anyone quite like him
and maybe there never will be.
I remember Gordon Tietjens, who first introduced him to
representative rugby in the NZ Sevens team, said Nigel, there's
a player here, just keep an eye on this man. He is a great spotter
of talent. He could see he was out of the ordinary and so its
proved and he could well be a name in world rugby that we will
remember from the occasions when we first saw him here in Rosario.
Argentina: The perfect hosts
However, it wasn't only the champions from New Zealand
who impressed me at the third edition of the Junior World
Championship, played in the Litoral region of Argentina. I think
what has pleased me most is the reception of the host country and
the host unions, the local unions, to making the most of this
opportunity.
They've certainly been delightful people to work
alongside and talking to some of the players even at the reception
after the final it was lovely to hear some boys from Fiji, a couple
of others from South Africa and a couple of the English lads I
spoke to who said it's been great, we've been very well
looked after.
Obviously their focus has been on the training and the
matches, and they all seem to say we have enjoyed it, and for these
young players of 19 and 20 what a wonderful life experience and
clearly they have benefited from that so it's not just the
rugby that's important but the way it is run.
The presentation of the tournament itself, the quality of the
grounds, the training paddocks and so on for the players along with
the enthusiasm - which is always a key word isn't it - of the
local people to make it happen and make it work in a country which
is pretty much an improvised one in terms of financial resources,
but they make up for that with their effort to make things happen.
From the very moment when 16,000 turned up on the first day
for the opening pool game between Argentina and England I thought
that was a reflection of how Argentina is determined to grab the
nettle with rugby.
They obviously have the incentive of joining in with
Australia, South Africa and New Zealand in the 2012 Four Nations
championship, but I think too at the lower level this would have
done them a power of good because it would have introduced a lot of
people - in an outpost of rugby really in Rosario - to a game for
men and women, and let's not forget that the future of rugby is
for both sexes.
I think this has helped enormously for the development of
rugby in Argentina and it certainly has been a huge benefit and an
experience never to be forgotten for the 12 teams taking part.
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