Bulldozing through
Resurgent New Zealand set their sights
Ian Foster led New Zealand back to the top of the world rankings on Saturday, but the All Blacks’ head coach dismissed the significance of the feat as he shifts attention to this week’s Rugby Championship clash with world champions SA.
The All Blacks supplanted the Springboks as the sport’s top-rated team with a 36-13 win over Argentina in Brisbane hours after the South Africans had slipped to a second successive loss against Australia.
The two nations will go head-to-head on Saturday in Townsville in their first meeting in this year’s southern hemisphere championship, and Foster has his sights fixed on the clash with Jacques Nienaber’s side.
“It’s not on our mind at all,” Foster said of the All Blacks’ move into the number one spot. “I’m not saying that to downplay it.”
With the SA match looming, he told a news conference after the Argentina match, “we’re more interested in winning a Test match than where we sit” on the rankings.
“If we focus too much on the other thing, we’ll get tripped up and won’t be there for very long and that doesn’t interest us either.”
The All Blacks have been in commanding form in the competition so far, defeating Argentina with a second-string line-up on Saturday after notching up a comfortable victory over the Pumas the previous weekend.
Foster’s team lead the standings in The Rugby Championship with a maximum 20 points from their first four games.
Anything other than a bonus point win for the Springboks will hand New Zealand the title.
“We love playing Test matches, but we really love playing SA, probably because of the amount of respect we’ve got for them,” Foster said.
“Over history it’s been an outstanding rivalry.
“We’re not so much talking about number ones and number twos, we’ve got a chance to go to Townsville to play a foe we’ve got a lot of respect for and put ourselves in a pretty nice position in this championship. ”
The scale of the Springboks’ task was underlined as a second-string All Blacks team ran over five tries to notch their fourth win from four matches in a dominant campaign.
“We obviously made a few changes and to keep our performance going with the new combination was pleasing,” Foster said.
“We didn’t change a lot of our game plans ... I was delighted with the way we got through that.”
Lock Tupou Vaa’i grabbed a brace of tries, while Patrick Tuipulotu, scrumhalf TJ Perenara and hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho also scored fivepointers as the All Blacks continued their rampaging form after hammering the Pumas 39-0 on the Gold Coast on Sunday last week.
It could have been much worse for Argentina as Foster’s side missed out on three tries in the first half and another in the second.
Two early tries were cancelled due to forward passes and a third to Rieko Ioane was ruled out before halftime after the centre lunged over illegally when brought down under the posts.
Young scrumhalf Finlay Christie blew the fourth when he fumbled the ball forward a metre out from an undefended line.
The injury-hit Pumas slumped to their fourth successive loss after opening defeats away to SA but it was a better performance by Mario Ledesma’s side.
The All Blacks took a 24-3 lead into the second half but Pumas winger Emiliano Boffelli grabbed a 51st minute try and his conversion shaved the deficit to 16 points.
But New Zealand defended strongly in the last quarter before Vaa’i cantered over unmarked three minutes from the siren for his second try as a tired defence surrendered. —