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Steve Hansen makes extraordinary claim about the significance of the England game
By Chris Jones
Coach Steve Hansen believes the looming clash with England at Twickenham is bigger than the All Blacks three test Lions series last year which ended in a draw in New Zealand.
The fact the best team in the World could only tie with the best of British and Irish rugby constituted a failure for the All Blacks and they want to make amends on Saturday. “I think (the England match is) even bigger actually. I think the Lions tour has made it bigger because we weren't successful," said the 59-year-old.
"In only drawing the series, that wasn't successful to us. That's made this week have a sharper edge to it, which is good.
"You've got to be reasonably stupid if you can't work out this is going to be big. There's 80,000 people (in the stadium), it's all over the papers, everyone's talking about it, you can't get a ticket.
"You'd have to be on holiday, I reckon, if you didn't work out that this is going to be big. And we haven't got anybody on holiday this week.”
Hansen is confident his team will deal with the pressure of the occasion thanks to their greater experience of test rugby. He explained: ”I don’t know who’s writing them off, it would be foolish to do that. But does it put pressure on us? No.
“There’s already pressure on us, the one constant thing about being in the All Blacks is you’re under pressure because you’re expected to win every Test match you play and not only win it, win it really, really well.
“Once you come to realise that then life becomes a little easier. And it does at times give you an advantage because when other teams get put under pressure of having to win big games, they haven’t experienced that as much as maybe we have.”
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Latest Comments
The manner of all these comments is that it doesn’t matter who plays No10 for the All Blacks, apparently they are all rubbish!
Seriously, people need to get a grip and stop obsessing over every tiny error made from an overscrutinised position. DMac was good this year for the most part, as was Beauden Barrett. Mo’unga was good last year and would be an asset in the group if he did come back. I don’t see it as an area of concern.
The main concern in 2025 is finding another world class lock and loose forward, followed by some scrutiny over the midfield combination in my view.
Go to commentsI was at this match. Jordie Barrett earned his money with a massive hit to slow a connaught attack to win the math when Leinster had 14 in the last few mins. Mack Hansen had a real go at the refereeing after citing a serious head hits on Iaone and Aki.
connaught were up for this. Snyman tried a trademark dirty after, and the onnaught 4 and the onnaught pack absolutely laid into him.
Leinster hose to kick to the corner when only winning by 5 with 10 left and qith only 2 tries scored. onnaught should have punisihed them for that utter stupidity after they broke out and Leinster yellowed to stop the attack.
13 changes from last week. It seems teams are scoring about 10 points less against Leinster this year. With Neinaber in his second year, the new attack coah established, surely they will be a bigger threat in champions up? Or will the attack recgress further.
They must adopt the SA philosophy of take your 3 pointers and the bonus points will come.
connaught back line inluding Iaone, Murphy, Aki, Forde, cordero is the seond best in Ireland surely. Leinster were lucky here
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