Panic-free All Blacks on limited menu before main course

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen wrote off his team's stuttering, but ultimately convincing, victory over Georgia as a pre-planned exercise in putting themselves under pressure in readiness for the quarter-finals.

New Zealand eventually ran in seven tries against Georgia in Friday's 43-10 win at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, but it was not a game that will stick long in the minds of All Blacks fans.

Spurning any "percentage" rugby by not kicking for territory meant the All Blacks put themselves under pressure by keeping the ball alive and taking contact with a hugely physical Georgian unit that won the 70,000 crowd over with their teak-tough defence that provoked an astonishing 18 handling errors by the men in black.

It was, Hansen said, a limited but essential gameplan menu before the main course of the quarter-finals.

"Clearly we're keeping some things up our sleeve, which we think is the sensible thing," Hansen said, adding that the Georgia match was "a perfect work-out".

Hansen explained forcing his players into situations that normally would be resolved by a raking Dan Carter kick to the corner or Aaron Smith turning the opposition with well-chased box kicks would pay off, even if it made for a terrible spectacle.

"It does come to the detriment to some of the other stuff that normally comes with it because we haven't got time," he said, with the free-running All Black attack largely failing to fire.

"There are areas of our game that weren't really on fire last night, but they're the things that have been put to one side a little bit at the expense of trying to improve other things.

"As we get closer to the quarter-final and sudden death we'll bring our whole game. If we brought our whole game straight away, everyone gets to see what we've got and it hasn't worked for us in the past.

"So we're trying a different tack. We know we've got to get better, but we've got a plan and we're happy with that."

The option not to kick the ball gifted the Georgians a try early in the match, something Hansen insisted was part of his team's learning curve.

"That put us under pressure and we have to learn how to deal with that pressure because we're going to get pressure in the quarter-final and if we don't deal with it then we go home," the straight-talking coach said.

"Everyone's told us we've got this weak pool, so how do we manufacture something that allows us to practise stuff we're going to get later on?"

Hansen, who was assistant to Graham Henry before taking over his post as Wales coach, added: "We don't need to panic.

"What we're trying to do is get our game in order so we can get to the knock-out stage where we can survive. We don't want to go home, we want to go all the way through but it's going to be difficult because we're going to play some really really good opposition.

"We're limiting people to what they can do. We're going into games with a very limited menu of what you're capable of doing and part of that menu actually allows the opposition to have a crack at you."

Hansen asked: "Was it easy to watch? No, it was bloody ugly. But we've got to get something out of it for us and it's not about the scoreboard but learning to play under that pressure.

"Beating them by another 20 points does nothing for us at quarter-final time.

"We're in this competition to get something out of it, not to get a pat on the back for beating Georgia and the likes of that by big scores, what's the point?"

 

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