Hansen heads Australian opposite Cheika in all aspects
The margin was narrower but the result no less humiliating for the Wallabies. Yesterday meant yet another bullseye for Steve Hansen. The All Blacks coach is rarely wide of his intended target and certainly didn’t miss Michael Cheika on this occasion.
‘‘They’ll come right, though, I’m confident of that,’’ Hansen said of the Wallabies yesterday. ’’They’ve certainly got the players to be a very good side.’’
Wonder what might be missing, then? Only one coach is winning
"I've always said the game's extremely hard to referee so, in my humble opinion, there's not much point having a crack at the referees." Steve Hansen
the trans-Tasman at the moment and it isn’t Cheika. Hansen has his opposite number beat and can afford to have a little fun. Sticking to just rugby for a minute, what the Wallabies produced in losing 29-9 to the All Blacks on Saturday was just woeful.
After the week they’d had since losing 42-8 in Sydney, offering such a limp response was embarrassing. Sure they mouthed off and made nuisances of themselves, but their set pieces were lamentable and they offered nothing in attack. Damage limitation must have been their primary motive because up-andunders and penalty goals were never going to beat New Zealand.
More than the odd All Black must have looked at each other in a huddle and asked: is this really all they’ve got?
Hansen says world, and New Zealand, rugby needs the Wallabies to be strong. And no doubt part of him believes that. It’s just that part of Hansen appears to need Cheika to be humiliated too.
The tweet on Saturday night from injured All Black Sonny Bill Williams, wondering how anyone could have voted for Cheika as 2015 world coach of the year, spoke volumes.
You won’t hear anyone from the New Zealand camp say it this explicitly, but they seem to regard the Wallabies are dim and prone to whinge.
Cheika could have taken his lumps on Saturday night. He’d again been outwitted by Hansen and his team thoroughly outplayed and saying so would have shown some substance.
Instead he rounded on referee Romain Poite. Cheika said Poite was one of the high-profile whistleblowers on the circuit that don’t give the Wallabies or captain Stephen Moore the respect they deserve. He’d made that point to World Rugby, he said, so the fact the problems persisted meant he was right.
‘‘I’ve always said the game’s extremely hard to referee so, in my humble opinion, there’s not much point having a crack at the referees,’’ said Hansen.
‘‘You’ve got to be consistent and careful when you do that sort of thing. He [Cheika] didn’t have a crack at the ref [Craig Joubert] in Scotland at the World Cup [last year] so you’ve got to be consistent. I know he was upset that the ref didn’t talk to Stephen, but if I was in their shoes I’d be wanting to ask myself what it is we’re doing that’s making him not want to talk to Stephen.
And because Hansen cares, he’s also counting just in case Cheika loses track of how many defeats in succession he’s suffered now.
‘‘They’ve just lost six games in a row and I can only imagine what we’d be like if we were in that situation.’’