All Blacks face speed versus accuracy battle as Italian job awaits in Wellington

Monday, 6 July 2026

Speed versus accuracy. It’s an age-old trade-off, and one which the All Blacks will grapple with this week as they aim to strike a closer to perfect balance with their reinvigorated game plan under new coach Dave Rennie.

Having kicked off their season, the new Nations Championship, and their own fresh era, with a shaky 34-32 win over an under-strength France in Christchurch, attention will turn to ironing out the kinks in what should be a straightforward assignment against Italy in Wellington on Saturday evening.

The All Blacks jetted out from the Garden City on Sunday, though won’t be sighted in the capital until Thursday afternoon, instead basing themselves in Auckland prior, in a move understood to have been locked in by the previous coaching regime.

After all, it’s not like Wellington’s been a fun place for the men in black over the last decade, winning an astonishingly low three of their last 10 games at Hnry Stadium, including suffering their biggest defeat in history on their last visit last September in that 43-10 humiliation by the Springboks.

It’s a different story for Rennie, of course. He was responsible for one of those results ‒ a 16-16 draw in his first match as Wallabies coach in 2020 ‒ while he was there in the stadium’s first year in 2000 coaching Wellington to the NPC title after playing for them a decade earlier. He was born in Lower Hutt, and was a teacher and ran a pub in Upper Hutt.

A happy homecoming is on the cards, in a test which had, despite the family-friendly kickoff time (5.10pm) in the school holidays, had proven a tough sell, but now indeed does look on track to be sold-out. Around 4000 tickets remained unsold as of late last week, but on Sunday the All Blacks ticketing website showed small pockets of seats available.

Italy will arrive off the back of a miserable 27-10 first-up loss to Japan, which represented a big step backwards after having matched their equal-best, and best in 13 years, Six Nations finish, where they placed fourth after home wins over Scotland and England, a few months after they had also knocked over the Wallabies.

In No 8 Lorenzo Cannone, who posted game-high numbers against Japan for carries (18), metres (68), and was also top-equal for defenders beaten (4), they have a hard-charging workhorse, while Toulon centre Juan Ignacio Brex and midfield mate Tommaso Menoncello will also be a handful.

But only if Gonzalo Quesada’s world No 10-ranked side, Springbok-style open-play lineout-type-drive trick play and all, can sharpen up their act in a big way, given they conceded a whopping 26 turnovers (to Japan’s seven) in Tokyo to walk away empty-handed.

Do that in Wellington and they will be slaughtered, by an All Blacks team who have been given the licence to counter-attack with vigour and seize their opportunities under Rennie’s buzzword of “optimism”.

But after seeing his own side squander several chances of their own through mis-directed passes or an over-eagerness, Rennie will be keeping his own backyard in order in a week where he is sure to want to hone accuracy to accompany the need for speed.

Against France, the All Blacks operated with a remarkable 81% ‘lightning-quick ball’ (ruck speed of zero to three seconds), which Rennie labelled “outrageous”, but it’s now combining that desire of tempo with execution that will be front of mind.

“There was one time where we were probably overly-optimistic, we had a penalty and we had two [players] and they had four,” Rennie noted.

“We were probably a bit loose at times, but it’s easier to haul things back in, I reckon [as opposed to the other way around], so really happy with the attitude.

“But happy to win, and we’ve got a game under our belt now and we’ll build on that.”

Nations Championship, round 1

In Christchurch: New Zealand 34 France 32

In Tokyo: Japan 27 Italy 10

In Sydney: Ireland 33 Australia 31

In Cardiff: Wales 39 Fiji 24

In Johannesburg: South Africa 45 England 21

In Córdoba: Scotland 47 Argentina 38

Points

Northern Hemisphere: Wales 5, Scotland 5, Ireland 5, France 2, Italy 0, England 0.

Southern Hemisphere: South Africa 5, New Zealand 5, Japan 4, Australia 2, Argentina 1, Fiji 0.