Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: What went wrong with Ardie Savea's Hosking interview?

Author: Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026, 7:07pm

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Ardie Savea of New Zealand reacts during The Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and South Africa Springboks at Eden Park on September 06, 2025 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)

Let’s talk about Ardie Savea’s interview on Mike Hosking’s show. I think we can all agree that it was awful, as the texts pointed out immediately.

It was pretty flat and miserable, which was strange because this was Savea’s first big media outing the day after being announced as All Blacks captain - to the biggest audience in the country.

You’d think that if there was ever an occasion to sound a little excited, engaging and bring your A-game, that would have been it.

Especially when you’re the captain - and not just employed to play rugby. You’re now also employed to win over (or at least retain) the fans, for a game that’s under significant pressure from all the other, arguably more entertaining options out there: rugby league, basketball, Netflix - you name it.

Whatever it is that your eyeballs are glued to instead of rugby union, he should be trying to win you over.

Now, to be fair to Savea, this isn’t exclusively an Ardie Savea problem. He is a little bit like that - his interviews generally sit on the less engaging end of the spectrum. But this is a much wider issue.

This is a rugby union problem, where it has become acceptable - and maybe even desirable - for players to be monosyllabic, dull and emotionless.

Why? I suspect it’s to avoid saying anything controversial, headline-grabbing or even mildly titillating.

But the sport, and its New Zealand headquarters, need to rethink this strategy. They need to go back and listen to the text feedback from that interview and ask themselves: is that really the response they want their newly appointed captain to generate the day after the announcement?

Because we should be talking about what an inspirational figure Ardie Savea is.

Instead, we’re talking about how poor his first interview to hundreds of thousands of listeners was.

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