Foster grateful for ‘stern challenge’
There is no secret where the All Blacks will be put to work this week — at the breakdown.
Having been repeatedly exposed over the ball in the 57-23 victory over Vern Cotter’s spirited Fijian side last night, All Blacks forwards coach John Plumtree acknowledged the lack of urgency and accuracy from his pack at the breakdown is in need of immediate attention.
“It’s given us something to really focus on this week, which is great,” Plumtree said after the All Blacks eventually ran away for a nine-triesto-three victory. “There’s different elements to the breakdown that you’ve got to get right.”
The concern for the All Blacks is their struggles in this area are far from a one-off. The more opposition have success here, the more they will target the breakdown.
“At times, we were a little bit quick to lose our feet and go to ground. At times, we were a bit slow to support. At times, we didn’t get our body height right. You mix all that up and it turns into a few penalties against us. That will definitely be a focus for the boys — we’ll fix it for next week.”
Crusaders forwards coach Jason Ryan, in his role assisting Cotter with Fiji, no doubt had a major hand in targeting the All Blacks ruck. Fiji’s tacklers stifled the All Blacks’ intent to play at pace, particularly in the first half.
Trailing 21-11 at halftime, Fiji closed to 31-23 in the second half after claiming their third try. The visitors, who emerged from two weeks of quarantine on Wednesday and had two training runs together as a full squad, tired in the final quarter as Dane Coles scored four tries and the All Blacks pulled well clear.
Despite being rattled in several areas, including their sloppy restarts, some aimless kicking and not always bringing the desired defensive line speed, All Blacks coach Ian Foster much preferred last night’s test to last week’s 102-0 romp over Tonga.
“They offered a pretty stern challenge,” Foster said. “They’re great athletes and chucked a lot at the game and had moments where they put us under quite a bit of pressure, but overall pleased with the way we came through that. It highlighted a few areas we’re going to have to tidy up a little bit but the composure to come back and win by nine tries was pretty pleasing.
“This is a test match where we actually got tested, so you learn. I don’t think we played with the confidence and imposed ourselves in that first 40 enough. We probably kicked the ball away unnecessarily at times instead of running, putting some phases together and backing ourselves in that space. Some of those things are important lessons.”
The impact from the bench, with Sam Whitelock’s composure significant and Coles injecting his guiding presence too, was influential in amending a disjointed All Blacks performance for 65 minutes.
“Four tries isn’t bad, is it? I’m glad I didn’t put him on five minutes earlier, he might have got five,” Foster said of Coles. “We were able to get more up tempo because we were more accurate as the game wore on. You’re going to get that against a quality team that you haven’t seen too much. That’s why I enjoyed the test match because it did expose a few areas and got us thinking about stuff. We muddled our way through it but we found some good solutions.”
Foster was pleased with David Havili’s two-try return to the test arena at second-five after last playing for the All Blacks four years ago.
“He was probably a little nervous at the start — there were a few of them like that. Things didn’t go smoothly, he missed a couple of things, but I like the fact he stayed in the game and had some good reads off the lineout mauls that got collapsed and scored a couple of tries off that.”