Steve Hansen picks out how Dave Rennie’s ‘better clarity’ All Blacks are different from Scott Robertson’s and what he would do to ‘fix’ the TMO
New All Blacks boss Dave Rennie reacts to his team's cup-winning victory last Saturday over France
Ex-All Blacks boss Steve Hansen has given his verdict on how differently Dave Rennie’s side play from what was seen in the past two years under Scott Robertson.
The Rennie era in charge of New Zealand got underway last Saturday with a 34-32 win over France in the opening round of the Nations Championship.
The match was only the second time Hansen, their 2015 Rugby World Cup-winning coach, had gotten along to watch his old team live since relinquishing the reins following the 2019 finals.
He loved the atmosphere that surrounded the game at the new stadium in Christchurch, but he also liked what the All Blacks produced in Rennie’s first outing since he succeeded Robertson as head coach earlier this year.
“More inclined to want to use the ball…”
Appearing on the Rugby Unity show hosted by David Pembroke, Hansen began his New Zealand-France review by sharing his thoughts about the new Te Kaha stadium. “It was awesome,” he said.
“Since I’ve retired, I have only seen two games. I went to the World Cup game against France and the All Blacks (in 2023), and this was my second one live. The new stadium is something pretty special. Nothing like it anywhere else in New Zealand and it felt like it was something you’d want to be part of every week if there was a game there. That was special.
“Everyone talks about France and it’s a B team, but for the last three, four years they have just quietly been building, building, building a squad of 40-odd players. They don’t mind dropping the odd Test match to give people the opportunity to grow and understand the game, so there is no such thing as a B team.”
Drilling down further into the match, Hansen moved on to deliver his take on Rennie’s All Blacks. “It was a cracking game; it see-sawed. I thought the All Blacks were pretty good first up under new coaching management and trying to play a different style to what they had been and learning about each other. It was a great occasion.
“They were more inclined to want to use the ball. Not kicking as much. They only kicked six times in the first half. And there is a real enthusiasm or optimism about having to be energetic to get back into the game, so they can do that.
“They picked a young five-eight [Ruben Love] who was the form five-eight in Super competition in Love, and I thought he played particularly well for his first start. He got yellow-carded but bounced back from that really well and directed them around the traps well and they created a lot of opportunities.
“The timing at times wasn’t quite as good as it could have been, but that is to be expected first Test of the year. They just looked like they want to play more up tempo, but the word I’d used is they had better clarity about what they wanted to do. It looked like they knew what they wanted to do. While they weren’t as clinical as they wanted to be, they certainly knew how they wanted to play.
“The big thing is they are going to play with pace. They are going to try and force opposition to go with them and the more successful they get with that, the harder they are going to be to combat.
“Love definitely showed that he is up to the mark. I thought (Sam) Darry had his best Test match for a wee while and looked more comfortable playing the style of footy that they want to play. (Luke) Jacobsen was very good at seven. I thought he did a lot of under-the-radar sort of stuff. He was tough.
“We have got some people to come back into the squad, so next week will be interesting to see if they stay with the same selection or will they give some other people a go. The young prop that came on (Xavier Numia), I thought he played well, scrummed okay but looks really, really comfortable with the ball in hand. All Blacks teams when they have a tight five that can play footy become very difficult to beat.”
Asked if making a fast start was an imperative when he was in charge of the All Blacks, Hansen said: “We didn’t have a real big intention about starting hard, but we just wanted to continue to play at pace if we could and we wanted everybody involved.
“The number on your back didn’t mean you didn’t clean out rucks; if you were a back from nine to 15 you had to do that too. But also, conversely, when the ball was being played, you want ball players in the tight five as it makes you a lot harder to deal with.
“The way the game has got now, because a lot of the teams are so structured, it’s pretty easy to read who is going to get the ball from the half-back or who is going to get the ball from the 10.
“But if you have got enough players in your group that can catch and pass with skill, then you make that more difficult to stop. That is what this group is going to try and do.”
Ex-Wallabies boss Ewen McKenzie was also on the show and his biggest bugbear coming out of the weekend was the overbearing influence of the TV producer, whose interference eventually led to a French try review and, ultimately, its cancellation for a difficult-to-see knock-on.
“My only concern is the TV producer is now circumventing the TMO,” said McKenzie. “He got involved late in the game with that denied French try. The try was awarded and then the TMO, I guess, was persuaded by the TV producer who kept putting on clips of a potential knock-on in the air and I thought the TV producer is now running the show. And the same happened in the Australian (v Ireland) game.
“We have had to deal with the TMO for a couple of years. Now we have to deal with the local TV producer running the game who just kept putting clips up, and then the touch judge goes, maybe there was an error and then they talk back to the TMO and suddenly the referee is under pressure. That’s one thing I didn’t like about the weekend.”
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Hansen interjected, claiming this type of interference wasn’t a new thing. “That has been happening for years. That happened to us in a Test match against South Africa once when Liam Messam tidied up the young full-back. Everybody missed it so they kept replay, replay, replay until such time it was, oh, hang on.”
The ex-New Zealand boss also explained how World Rugby could quickly fix this annoying issue. “I reckon World Rugby could fix that; they just turn around and say, right, unless you are asked by the referee to comment or look at anything, then you don’t look at it. They will miss some stuff, but rugby has always been like that; you get swings and roundabouts. The public get less frustrated with it too.”
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