Hansen: The world is catching up
Newsflash New Zealand: the rest of the rugby world is catching up, and sometimes you need to be satisfied with an All Blacks victory of any kind.
That was the gist of the reaction from head coach Steve Hansen to his side’s knife-edge 22-17 victory over Scotland at Murrayfield yesterday. It was a win that also came at a cost, with lock Luke Romano out for next weekend’s year-ender in Cardiff with plantar fascia problems, and standout wing Rieko Ioane in some doubt with a shoulder issue.
But Hansen was very much taking the glass-half-full view of a less-than-convincing performance from his side in which the fired-up Scots, feeding off the passion of a 67,000-strong sellout crowd and ailing former international Doddie Weir’s inspirational presence, managed to put them under a lot more pressure than anyone expected.
Yes, the All Blacks made exceedingly hard work of their second test victory on this tour; and, yes, we could have had another Chicago on our hands but for Beauden Barrett’s timely defensive intervention at the end to halt Stuart Hogg’s potentially game-winning break. But Hansen was rapt with the way his men, having painted themselves into a corner, managed to find a way home.
‘‘I was pretty satisfied,’’ he said when asked if he was relieved. ‘‘I thought it was a great game of football, I thought Scotland really stood up and were counted and, in return, so did we.
‘‘Test matches are called test matches because they’re a test of your mental resolve and skill. Both teams contributed to a fine match, and we’re happy because we came out on top.
"Everyone back home was telling us how they were getting bored with us being dominant." Steve Hansen
There are a few things we have got to get better at, no doubt, but we expected what we got because Scotland have been slowly improving the last 12-18 months, and that was a pretty impressive performance.’’
Some things will concern the coach, though. Two yellow cards, to Sam Cane and Wyatt Crockett, continued the issues with discipline and Hansen conceded he had not seen needed improvements there; and the All Blacks were simply too passive in the opening 40 when Scotland were desperately unlucky not to be better placed than a 3-3 deadlock.
But Hansen dished up some perspective when Stuff asked him if it was the sort of All Blacks result that New Zealanders have to learn to accept in a changing international landscape.
‘‘We don’t have too many choices about accepting it because it’s a fact,’’ he replied. ‘‘Do they understand [Scotland] is a good team? Some will and some won’t. The people that understand the game will know that Scotland played particularly well, and they’ll know they’ve beaten Australia this year and this was their first loss at home in the last five games. That tells you they’re not a bad side.
‘‘They’re a team on the rise, and world rugby at the moment has some good teams which is exciting. We’ve just seen England tip over Australia down there in a tight game ... Fiji just about tipped over Ireland, and Scotland could easily have won tonight. Rugby is in a good place.
‘‘Everyone back home was telling us how they were getting bored with us being dominant. Well, they’ll have to go away and have a cup of tea and think about that.’’
Hansen was also animated on the subject of positives from an All Blacks perspective.
‘‘The biggest positive is we played a very, very good side who put us under pressure and we found a way to win; we found a way to win playing 20 minutes with 14 players; and we found a way to win a scrum under our posts with the old skip having to go to lock, and he doesn’t like that much.
‘‘To be able to get the win against a really good side tonight was pretty pleasing.’’
Then he was off. Probably to drain that half-full glass.
Poor discipline
Rinse and repeat.
The All Blacks shooting themselves in the foot through poor discipline is an alarming problem.
British referee Matthew Carley pinged them 16 times, seven of them within the first half-hour and a mountain more inside the final 10 minutes, and you couldn’t bemoan him for doing so.
He had no choice but to send flanker Sam Cane and substitute prop Wyatt Crockett to the bin for repeated infringements on the goalline, forcing the home side to cling on with 14 men for the final 20 minutes.
Playing a man down has been a bit of a theme all season and captain Kieran Read knows it. ‘‘It’s not what you want to be doing, especially at the back end of the game. We’ve got to work on it, so we’ve just got to be smarter,’’ he said.
Scotland forced the All Blacks to concede many of them through pressure, but it’s the ‘‘silly’’ ones coach Steve Hansen spoke about a fortnight ago which hurt., such as the one flanker Vaea Fifita conceded with 11 minutes to play, when the All Blacks had just scored to go 22-10 up, only for him to be offside from the TJ Perenara box-kick.
No yellow card
Don’t be surprised if Scottish fans and media make some noise about All Blacks wing Waisake Naholo avoiding a yellow card in the 28th minute.
We’ve seen players cop both yellow and red cards for colliding with players in the act of contesting a high ball all season, and the Murrayfield crowd was baying for blood after Naholo connected with fullback Stuart Hogg.
It c didn’t warrant a red card. But referee Matthew Carley was set to reach for yellow before TMO Graham Hughes suggested a penalty was sufficient punishment.
Carley had another look and, after another chat with Hughes, decided the mitigating factor - Scotland halfback Ali Price made a nuisance of himself - was enough to wipe out the need for a card. The home crowd howled in disbelief, but the young British referee got it bang on.
The Ioane factor
If anyone was holding out hope of seeing Julian Savea return to the leftwing for the national side, they can forget it.
That’s Rieko Ioane’s spot and it’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing there unless he gets injured (touch wood). Ioane, one of the best All Blacks this year, was superb against Scotland in the penultimate test of the season, finishing with 87 metres on 10 carries.
But what’s arguably most impressive about the 20-year-old is his ability to make the first man miss with his explosive speed and power.
He used both to setup the All Blacks’ opening try early in the second half, when he somehow busted free of a crowd of Scottish defenders and offloaded to hooker Codie Taylor. A few phases later, he dished try-scorer Taylor the final pass.
Wasteful Scots
Talk about blowing a golden opportunity.
The home side spent about 10 minutes inside the All Blacks’ 22m, 72 per cent of the game was played in the All Blacks’ half, and Scotland enjoyed a ton of possession and territory.
However, they squandered chance after chance to cash in, particularly when they dominated the first half but had to settle for a 3-3 scoreline at the turn.
At one stage, they strung 19 phases together and were plugging away at the line, only for the ball to hit the Murrayfield turf.
To name a few, Huw Jones, Zander Fagerson and Tommy Seymour all made costly blunders, and Scotland will look back at the first half and believe they should have been leading by at least 17-3.
Scotland will also rue their inability to put the 14-men All Blacks away in the final 20 minutes.