Total focus is name of the game

WALES have been blasting out piped crowd noise in training to ready for their return to a packed Principality Stadium against the All Blacks. It is 20 months since the cathedral of Welsh rugby was last full to capacity and Wales are expecting a deafening backing track to the game from the 75,000 crowd. “We’ve done a bit of speaker stuff with lineout calling just to prepare for that,” said Wales captain Alun Wyn Jones. “We’ve done it in the past just to create noise and try to make it as close to what it is going to be like.”

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NEW ZEALAND have paid so little attention to Wales in the build-up to today’s Test they do not know many of their opponents’ names. The All Blacks are taking the business of concentrating on their own game to the extreme, with flanker Ethan Blackadder admitting he is only familiar with converted Kiwis Gareth Anscombe and Johnny McNicholl and captain Alun Wyn Jones in a weakened Wales line-up.

“I don’t know many of the Welsh boys, just those two or three,” said Blackadder (above), the son of former Bath director of rugby Todd.

The 26-year-old was not aware he would be taking on an all-Dragons trio in the back row battle in Cardiff. “They will obviously know their games inside and out, will know each other very well, which could be an advantage to them. But we will worry about our game and impose ourselves on them.” The Wales line-up may be unfamiliar, but New Zealand wing Rieko Ioane said he did not expect a walkover.

“We don’t see it that way and I’m sure the team they have named doesn’t see it that way,” he said.