No real contentious selections in my view. Only change id make is switch JOC (James O'Connor) and To'omua around, but not sure how much that matters.
When looking at this list i can't help but feel Rennie has his hands full turning it into a team that can beat the All Blacks.
Edit: oh, and it's encouraging to see him list only actual wingers on the wing.
At the risk of seeming to bullish on our chances, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the next 5 yrs to be significantly more competitive. Essentially because the last 15 we’ve had serious underlying issues which we haven’t been able to address.
In no particular order we’ve had props who couldn’t scrum effectively, hookers that couldn’t throw; we haven’t had a consistent quality second row paring formost of the last 10 yrs and we’ve lacked a genuine world class 6 & 8 for much of that period as well (noting Pocock is an outstanding player, but is a genuine 7). We haven’t had a quality lineout pretty much since Fardy left. We’ve had half backs that either dithered at the back of the ruck or sprayed their passes like pellet guns. 5/8 has been done to death, all or almost all (in case I’m forgetting anyone) our 12s have been a compromise, we have regularly filled 1 wing spot with a non-winger and even our fullback for most of that time lacked core positional skills in kicking & defence positioning. The general standing of our out of hand kicking has been horrendous- not helped by placing no value on the skill.
We haven’t had a consistently excellent goal kicker, our fitness has been substandard and tactically we have been consistently poor.
Across all of that list I would say I still have a concern with the throwing of our current batch of hookers - Horton excepted (but I’m not convinced he is big enough to be a test hooker. Fainga’a is the best of the remainder but has had a couple of shockers in big games). There are a couple of others on the list that remain to be proven, but I think Rennie has demonstrated historically he will be very focused on addressing those. I think there is every sign that we will have cattle competing for positions we simply haven’t had for the last 15 yrs or so. Even at lock where Rennie may have to pull a player or two back from OS we appear to have finally developed some genuine depth.
I concede that the rest of the world is hardly standing still waiting for us to catch up, but it does seem a completely reasonable assertion at the moment that we are going to see a marked improvement in our performance going forward.