1
Sam Cane reveals what he thought about Peter O'Mahony's goal line sledge
By Sam Smith
All Blacks captain Sam Cane has revealed what he thought about being sledged by Irish No 6 Peter O'Mahoney on the goal line during the second test in Dunedin.
Munster hard man O'Mahoney was having a blustering performance over the All Blacks and reserved some choice words for the All Black captain when it looked like Ireland had the game all but sealed with a comfortable lead.
Both forward packs became entangled with five minutes remaining where O'Mahoney had the chance to spray Cane with a sledge, calling him a 's*** Richie McCaw' after asking him "who do you think you are?"
Pressed by media after training on Tuesday about the incident, Cane said he enjoyed the banter and didn't mind getting involved in that kind of stuff on the field.
"It's just good rugby banter," Cane responded.
"It's all part of the game, I don't mind it. It's good stuff."
Following the 23-12 loss to Ireland, New Zealand slipped to fourth in World Rugby's rankings which is the lowest they have ever been.
France and Ireland jumped in the rankings to first and second, while South Africa slipped to third following their defeat to Wales.
The All Blacks captain said that the slide in the rankings has not been a focus but the longer term goal of the team is to get back to number one in the world.
"If I'm honest, we haven't paid too much attention to that," Cane said.
"We've got enough on our hands, digesting what happened in the weekend, and focusing on the game this weekend to worry about.
"Things like world rankings and that kind of stuff takes care of itself when we are playing well. That's where all our energy is on.
"I don't know, I don't even understand how the rankings work exactly myself, it's certainly sort of a goal of ours to make sure we get back to world number one but we realise the process is performing consistently every week.
"At the moment we haven't been doing that well enough."
The All Blacks are expecting the pressure of their series decider to mirror that of a World Cup knockout game which will hold valuable experience for the younger members of the squad going forward.
"The situation is not what we wanted it to be, but now we look at it and embrace it," Cane said.
"It's a good challenge for us, it's do-or-die, it's just like World Cup stuff and we are looking forward to it."
Trending on RugbyPass
2
All Blacks XV player ratings vs Munster
3
Suaalii strikes awe as Wallabies lose midfielder
4
Scott Robertson responds about handling errors
5
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.
Go to comments