Springboks not weighing on All Blacks’ mind after defeat to Los Pumas
All Blacks flyer Will Jordan and defence coach Scott Hansen.
New Zealand will not get ahead of themselves in their Rugby Championship campaign and are fully focused on exacting revenge on Argentina when they meet at Eden Park in Auckland on Saturday.
That was the word from All Blacks defence coach Scott Hansen after they were on the wrong end of a 38-30 result against Los Pumas in their competition opener at the weekend.
When the Rugby Championship fixtures were announced there was plenty of interest around the matches between the All Blacks, who are the tournament’s most successful team, and their arch rivals the Springboks, who are the current world champions.
Facing Boks in South Africa twice
Both those Tests will be played in South Africa – in Johannesburg on August 31 and Cape Town on September 7 – but Hansen revealed that facing the Springboks is not what the All Blacks are focusing on at the moment.
“It’s one Test at a time for the All Blacks, that’s where we focus,” he said. “We’ve been through one where there’s a lot of learnings for us.
“Those learnings need to be applied going through the season. So this is a test we need to learn from, take the learnings now and the result of that continues for the coming Tests.
“It’s not one where we need to go through again. So that’s our challenge. Whatever you learn, how do you adjust and you continue that through the year.
“So that’ll be our focus this week against Argie (Argentina). What’s in front of Argie is not for our concern at the moment.
All Blacks coach identifies where it all went wrong against Argentina
“We’ve got to do a job this Saturday.”
When asked if the All Blacks coaching staff had watched the weekend’s other Rugby Championship clash between the Springboks and Wallabies, Hansen said: “Not myself personally, as you could understand. Fair bit of looking at our game at the moment.”
As the team’s defence coach, Hansen was understandably not happy that New Zealand conceded 38 points against Argentina of which 20 of those came via four tries.
‘We need to be far better’
“You take those kinds of things personally,” said the 48-year-old. “What is your game? How can you correct it? We talked about as a defence today that we need to be far better than where we were. We understand the opportunities that we had on the weekend to be better.
“When you’re talking about defence, you’re talking about physicality and intensity and we weren’t too far off there. Defensively and our tackle rate was as high as any Test. But when you’re playing Argentina, it’s a different form of attack.
“Think about the kick game we had. Where their tries came from was off the back of us not being set defensively. So I was happy enough when we were able to sit and find our shape.
“What we need to adjust to quicker is a transitional change and that’ll be our challenge.”