Hansen: Rugby needs Aussies to get their game in order

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen says rugby desperately needs the Wallabies to battle back to form.

Hansen, speaking from the comfort of another Bledisloe Cup series victory after the 29-9 win in Wellington last Saturday night, offered some sympathy and hope for the Wallabies moving forward.

With the world champions continuing to strengthen their stranglehold on the game, Hansen felt it was important for the bigger picture to get Australian rugby firing again.

A dismal Super Rugby cam- paign has been followed by a winless test season for Michael Cheika’s team who lost the June series 3-0 to England and have twice been soundly beaten by the All Blacks on consecutive weekends.

Less than nine months ago Australia were clearly the second best team in the game with a stirring World Cup campaign that fell short at the final hurdle at the hands of a rampant New Zealand team at Twickenham.

Their fall from grace since then has been alarming and bemusing.

‘‘Rugby is an important game, it’s a lot more important than just us, we need them to be playing well and getting people to go along and watch them in Australia,’’ a gracious Hansen told the Daily Telegraph.

‘‘It’s a tough market over there because you’ve got some other sports claiming part of the market.

‘‘We want them to go well. Aust- ralian rugby is competing with other sports that might just be ahead of them at the moment, from a fan point of view.

‘‘We want a strong southern hemisphere base for the game, we want our closest neighbours to be strong. They’ll come right though, I’m confident of that. They’ve certainly got the players to be a very good side.’’

Getting those players to gell is the problem for the Wallabies now.

The All Blacks have quickly stolen a mach on the latest Rugby Championship, leaving the Wallabies win-less while South Africa and Argentina shared their home and away series over the last two weekends.

But Hansen certainly doesn’t want to take the foot off the throat of the Wallabies during his time in charge of the All Blacks which will now go through to 2020 under his latest contract extension.

He said holding on to the Bledisloe Cup, a trophy rated second only to the World Cup by the All Blacks, was a motivating factor for him when he considered whether or not to push on with the top job in New Zealand rugby.

‘‘I thought about it at the start of the process, what it would feel like, and didn’t like the idea of it, and I mentioned it to a few people and they didn’t like the idea of it either, that’s why they played as hard as they played,’’ Hansen said as his team extended the current Bledisloe reign to 14 years.

‘‘It means a lot to us, but one day it’s inevitable someone’s going to lose it for sure, I’m just hoping it’s not on my watch.

‘‘Along the line somewhere we’ll get beaten and we’ve just got to cop that and take our lessons, understand where we went wrong and go and improve them.

‘‘It’s sport, people get beaten. There’s a winner and a loser all the time.

‘‘At the moment we’re on a bit of a roll and things are going good for us. We’ve got to keep striving to be better, otherwise someone will come along and take it off us.’’

The Rugby Championship taakes a week’s breather now before the All Blacks host the Pumas in Wellington and Australia look to rebound against the Springboks in Brisbane.