Hansen: Expects a war of attrition
All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen expects another war of attrition when his side faces the Pumas in La Plata.
Despite winning the previous match between these sides in Wellington earlier this month, the Pumas managed to keep the the All Blacks at bay for more than an hour before two late tries secured a 21-5 victory for the home side.
And Hansen is convinced Argentina will resort to similar tactics which prevented New Zealand launching attacks in that Test.
According to Fairfax Media, Hansen criticised Argentina's forwards for habitually losing their footing at the breakdown and killing the ball as a means of disrupting New Zealand's momentum.
"Argentina will look to slow it down and make it a scrappy game," he said.
"If it does get scrappy we'll get what we got in Wellington."
Hansen believes it's imperative that his side counters that tactic so that they can implement their expansive game-pan.
"We've got to get quicker ball, we've got to win the collision as the ball carrier and get our cleanout right," he said.
"We've got to keep the big Argentinian forwards from going off their feet, killing our ball and slowing our ball."
The All Blacks have scored seven tries in the four Tests since crossing the line nine times in their 60-0 demolition of Ireland in Hamilton earlier this year.
Despite this statistic, Hansen remains positive.
"We're not scoring a lot of tries but the tries we are scoring are off set-piece play and no other team in the world's doing that to the same extent at the moment," he said.
"What we've got to do now is put together the broken play tries - forwards and backs combining - and the opposition aren't allowing us to do that. So far they've been good enough to stop us."
Comments
philipjfry says...
There's not a team in the world that doesn't try and slow down their opponents ball, including the ABs. Strange comments.
Posted 13:18 24th September 2012
makemehappy says...
Can't argue with fact!
Posted 13:05 24th September 2012
Irishinlondon says...
60 - 0 demolition of Ireland, I don't remember that, I'm pretty sure there were only two tests in the summer and we almost one the second!
Posted 13:03 24th September 2012