As Northampton face Wasps, spotlight falls on two All Blacks who have struggled to adapt on the other side of the world
A mantra of the All Blacks is that players have to look within themselves. “The challenge is to always improve, to always get better, even when you are the best,” it goes. “Especially when you are the best.” It is a reason why European clubs have long coveted
New Zealand internationals and paid them appropriately, but even the very best need time to adjust to the significant differences between the game in the hemispheres as well as move to the other side of the world.
Northampton this season signed the prop Owen Franks, a 108-cap,
World Cup winner in 2011 and 2015 whose brother, Ben, was already at the club, while their opponents at Franklin’s Gardens on Sunday, Wasps, recruited the fly-half Lima Sopoaga in the summer of 2018 as a replacement for an equally instinctive pivot, Danny Cipriani. Neither has yet made the expected impact and both are on the bench, understudying their juniors.