Mark Telea is tackled by Luca Morisi during the Rugby World Cup France 2023 match between the All Blacks and Italy at Parc Olympique Photo: Michael Steele
If you were to have looked at the All Blacks and Uruguay fixture after each team's respective first games at the Rugby World Cup, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it might be a close-run thing. That was four weeks ago, though, a long time in rugby made even longer by the seemingly interminable way this tournament has been structured.
Both sides played France first up and both lost. The All Blacks received a serious amount of critique for playing enough rugby to win and somehow still losing comfortably, while Los Teros pushed the tournament hosts to the end and received a fair amount of praise in doing so.
Since then, the All Blacks have scored 167 points in two matches and looked much more like the most successful team in rugby history - albeit against a Namibian team that would struggle to win the Heartland Championship and a bunch of Italians who forgot how to tackle.
The Uruguayans lost to Italy and beat Namibia and are technically playing for a quarter-final spot against the All Blacks but are more accurately playing for pride. It is the first meeting between the two sides since 1976, which was played in Montevideo and is not counted as an official test match by NZ Rugby. For those interested in historical anomalies, the '76 team that toured Uruguay and Argentina was a completely different All Black selection to the one that had gone to South Africa a few months prior.
The All Blacks won 64-3 that day, on the way to a perfect nine wins from nine games on the tour. To be honest, a similar score line tomorrow morning in Lyon would certainly tick all the boxes the All Blacks need to before they head into the quarter finals.
Ian Foster has predictably rolled a few changes for this one, bringing in Tupou Vaa'I and Luke Jacobson to the forwards, while Anton Lienert-Brown moves into centre. Cam Roigard gets another start at halfback, as does winger Leicester Fainga'anuku, while Damian McKenzie moves to fullback.
That's probably the most interesting development for the All Blacks, as the dual playmaker roles now see Richie Mo'unga and McKenzie running the ship. Beauden Barrett is ready and waiting on the bench to be a fireman if needed, in the unlikely event that the scores are close in the second half.
Cam Roigard goes in for the first try of the Rugby World Cup match against Namibia at Stadium de Toulouse. Photo: Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
Meanwhile, Roigard will get another chance to run from the base of the scrum if his forwards can assert the amount of dominance they did on the woeful Italians. The Counties Manukau 22-year-old has already shown enough poise and game breaking ability to convince many that he's the heir-apparent to Aaron Smith, but we're not going to really know that for certain till Roigard does it in a test match against a good team, but the signs from his body of work in Super Rugby certainly suggests he's up to it.
There's another question to be asked as to why Smith doesn't just keep going, though. He did score a hat-trick in the first half hour of his last test and arguably outpointed Antoine Dupont in the opening match against France and could probably lay claim to being in the best form of any All Black right now.
Really though, the most important game this weekend that pertains to the All Blacks' future at the tournament doesn't actually involve them. Ireland take on Scotland on Sunday morning in Paris, which will decide who Foster's side plays in the quarter-finals. It should end up being Ireland, but this Scottish side will give them a fair workout in the process, meaning that the Irish will be backing up off a proper test match rather than the formality the All Blacks are going to have - plus the extra day's rest Foster's players can enjoy.
