The ABs plan to stop reviews from being finger-pointing exercises

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Ireland celebrate on fulltime after beating the All Blacks at Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Picture: STUFF SPORTS

In the demanding, emotion-charged world of high-performance sport, there is one component that has the obvious potential to be a double-edged sword.

Season and campaign reviews have to be calibrated carefully. If they are too vague or soft, few lessons can be learnt and improvements made. But if they are too brutal, athletes can feel targeted and bruised.

It’s a balancing act All Blacks coach Ian Foster knows well, and as the All Blacks and New Zealand Rugby pore over their side’s performances in separate but dovetailing examinations, he is determined to get it right.

“Reviewing is a multifaceted thing and everyone will find different ways to do it,” Foster told Stuff. “For us.we do a review every week. We get used to having pretty tough conversations with each other after test matches and after training sessions.

“Having a tough conversation is not new to us. I think the challenge when you review is to make sure it doesn’t turn into a judgment from one group to the other.”

The task grows more difficult after test losses, such as the All Blacks’ back-to-back defeats against Ireland and France. Factor in the importance of mental health to the modern athlete and the pitfalls become even more obvious.

However, Foster says they remain a powerful tool if done right.

“You actually want people to really focus hard on reviewing the role what they brought to the team, how they feel that they can improve and grow,” he said.

“And then, what else could you tweak and change that could improve the environment.

“I think when you get that balance, I think that’s when the review becomes quite powerful. It’s when one group will say, ‘Well, this is what your group did right or wrong’, that’s, that’s when I think judgment kicks in and it gets a little bit emotive.

“We give the players the chance to express how they went and what areas they reckon they could do better, and then how we could improve the environment/management/everything.”

The All Blacks’ spell in MIQ allowed for a good degree of internal analysis, Foster said, and Sam Cane has already outlined areas that must improve.

NZ Rugby’s annual review will take place in coming months. A combination of one-on-one conversations, group conversations and online conversations, it will be cross-referenced with the All Blacks’ findings to make sure they are on the same page.

“We won’t know everything that comes out of that until mid-to-late January,” Foster said. “I certainly know the trends, and we dovetail that with our internal ones.

“What’s our alignment like? Are we pretty good? Where do we have to move?

“The findings of our review will probably be either January or early February, before we really get together as a group and say, ‘here’s the key things that we have to move or here’s the key things we’ve done well’, because understanding what went well for us is as important as the areas that we need to move.”

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