Rugby Hansen gives the All Blacks reality check
Devil in Bledisloe detail hasn’t made for a happy coaching team Turnstile defence under review after porous start
No one required a degree in anthropology to read All Blacks coach Steve Hansen’s mood when his team came together this week. It was obvious he had spent Monday morning delivering a few home truths to a young and inexperienced side whom he suspects spent the first half hour of their previous test in Dunedin last month believing their own hype.
His body language, tone, demeanour and mood suggested the usual post-match debrief had contained more stick than carrot.
While proud of the way the All Blacks saved the second Bledisloe test so late in the piece, he wasn’t so impressed by the hole his side had dug for themselves in the first 30 minutes at Forsyth Barr Stadium. If they hadn’t been so loose, so inaccurate and so casual in the first half hour in Dunedin, they wouldn’t have needed the miracle escape.
Everyone else can bask in the glory of that magnificent test: celebrate the way the All Blacks found so much composure and clinical edge in the last three minutes to win an epic encounter 35-29, but Hansen and his management team can’t.
Their focus falls on the micro more than it does macro and poking around in the detail hasn’t made for a happy All Blacks coaching team. They simply can’t ignore the fact that the All Blacks found themselves 17-0 down in as many minutes. And they certainly can’t pretend that the All Blacks weren’t the architects of those first three Wallabies tries.
Australia played well, they showed courage, resilience, flair and defensive tenacity bordering on heroics to get within three minutes of an unexpected victory, but they were given a massive leg up early on.
Damian McKenzie threw an intercept pass to Israel Folau for the first try; Kieran Read slipped off a straightforward tackle on Michael Hooper for the second and Aaron Smith stood back to let Will Genia run from the base of a disintegrating scrum rather then bury the Wallaby halfback miles behind the gainline.
Three big mistakes led to 17 points for the Wallabies which could have been 21 had Bernard Foley not been unusually wild off the tee.
The conclusion Hansen reached is that some of the individuals involved didn’t prepare as well for that test as they needed to.
Since he graduated to the top job in 2012, Hansen has become renowned for his conviction that preparation is everything.
He famously coined the phrase “bone deep” as a measure of how deep preparation had to be, and it would be apparent without him having said so much directly, that he doesn’t feel enough of the team did that ahead of the Dunedin test.
He doesn’t want to risk the same mistake being made this week so it’s a good guess he let that fact be known to the players. Hansen presumably provided a not so gentle reality check about what life at this level looks like and requires. A leakier than usual All Blacks defence will be put under the microscope this week by the coaches.
Last year, the All Blacks conceded only 84 points in six tests on their way to winning the Rugby Championship. This year, after two tests against the Wallabies, they have leaked 63 and have shown a worrying trend to give up quick backto-back tries.
In Dunedin last month, the All Blacks gave up three tries in the first 14 minutes. And once they overtook the Wallabies in the second half they then conceded the lead twice as the visitors scored through Will Genia and Kurtley Beale, only for skipper Kieran Read’s late heroics in turning the test.
The previous week in Sydney, the All Blacks conceded four tries in 16 minutes in the second half.
Argentina won’t have the attacking ability of the Wallabies when they take on the All Blacks in New Plymouth on Saturday, but they do have the ability to create pressure and capitalise on mistakes.
The Crusaders, Hurricanes and Chiefs all went deep into the recent Super Rugby championship through a counterattacking, free-running style. The goal for the All Blacks, after two recent uneven performances, will be to improve their option-taking and execution on attack. What works in Super Rugby doesn’t necessarily transfer to the level above.
“It’s a big opportunity for us this week to really get our preparation right individually and grow ourselves to become better players, become better in our mini units and better as a team,” he said yesterday.
“We probably haven’t nailed that so far this year so this is a great opportunity for us to play an opposition who are physically up for it. If
“We’ve conceded more than we would like but we have also scored a lot and some of that attacking attitude has also gifted the opposition some of those tries,” assistant coach Ian Foster said yesterday.
“When you take away an intercept pass last week and a dominant scrum we didn’t shut down properly — there are some things there [to improve] — it’s nothing really to do with the defence,” he said. “Some of [the issues] are to do with our execution on attack and not gifting the opposition stuff, and some of it is getting better in our [defensive] systems just like we do on attack.
“It’s a work in progress but clearly we have been making it too easy by gifting the opposition tries through our own handling errors and we’ve got to work on that part of it.”
Previously, the work the opposition have put in to stop the early and relentless All Black attacks has paid off for in the second half of matches. It takes physical and mental effort to make multiple tackles and the All Blacks have cashed in through their superior fitness and reserves bench. But that hasn’t transpired this year.
Part of that has been sub-standard skill execution which is letting teams off the hook. But the All Blacks were ordinary by their standards in the final quarters of the three British and Irish Lions tests, poor there in Sydney, and had Read, TJ Perenara and Beauden Barrett to thank for their late revival in Dunedin. we get Sunday to Friday right we will always give ourselves a good opportunity to play well. We know success is a lousy teacher so we have got to start learning better about our Sunday to Friday routines and habits so we can get better and stronger and keep advancing our performances and not getting complacent and not getting comfortable.”