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'Owned the situation': Robertson happy with All Blacks response at Eden Park
By Ben Smith
All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson is happy his team "owned the situation" and responded in the right way after suffering a loss at the hands of the Pumas last week.
An early try to Damian McKenzie, who Robertson said praised as having his best game so far at No 10, sparked a first half blitz that had 35 points up by half-time.
Savea scored next from a pick and go try before the All Blacks showed some dazzling skills with tries to outside backs Caleb Clarke, Will Jordan and Beauden Barrett.
"Happy, because we owned the situation we put ourselves in from last week to this week," Robertson said of the win.
"We talked about having a response, and we did tonight, especially the first 40.
"We created more opportunities and executed them," Robertson said.
"Our timing was a little bit better. We created a bit more. We played through the front door – we banged that down quite nicely – which created opportunities out the back."
Robertson was overall pleased but a second half slump once the reserves were sent in early, just 10 minutes into the second half, was something that "just happens".
The All Blacks were able to experiment with their selections in the final half hour but it didn't pay any dividends as they failed to score a point in that time.
"We wanted to bury them in the Garden," Robertson said.
"We wanted to make sure that we finished them off. Sometimes it happens.
“The great thing about that is we got Beauden [Barrett] to 10 and Rieko [Ioane] to left wing and got Anton [Lienert-Brown] on. We played the whole squad – we just lost a little bit of rhythm doing it.
"When we got down there, into the 22, we just didn't finish a couple (of opportunities) off, which would have probably made it a bit sweeter.
"But the efforts were there that created those opportunities."
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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