Watch out Wayne, Hansen’s from that Sir Alf old school
STEVE Hansen presided over the All Blacks’ riotous win over Samoa with all the excitement of a chief clerk at a bus depot ticking off the arrivals and departures on a clipboard for the approval of the inspector.
His two assistant clerks, Ian Forster and Wayne Smith, looked as though they had seen it all before, many times.
Between them, the three coaches did not appear to raise as much as a smile at the predictably one-sided nature of their warm-up for the Lions. And that, in its way, seems even more daunting than the collective basketball skills used in averaging virtually a point-aminute. The 12 tries were duly logged with the air of men who expected no less.
Smith did permit himself to applaud one or two of the nobler efforts, an acknowledgement which never got to more than a discreetly brief clap of the hands. Hansen did no such thing.
Sir Alf Ramsey would have approved.
When England’s footballers won the World Cup in 1966, their notoriously taciturn manager refused to join the jubilation and scolded the trainer, Harold Shepherdson, for leaping out of his seat: “Sit down, Harold and stop drawing attention to yourself…”