ALL BLACKS COACH Steve Hansen insists Ireland are favourites ahead of Saturday’s Test match at the Aviva Stadium, maintaining that his side — the world champions — go in as underdogs.
New Zealand suffered their first defeat in 18 matches to Joe Schmidt’s men in Chicago less than a fortnight ago and Hansen points to that result as the basis for his assessment.
“Just go back to Chicago and I think that was 40-29,” he said, at this afternoon’s pre-match press conference.
“So therefore they’ve got to be the favourites, they won the last game and they won it easy so we have to be the underdogs. It’s just a fact, you can’t avoid facts. They are what they are and our job is to go out and play better than we did last time and hopefully that will be good enough to get the result we want.
“I’m sure Ireland will be going out to do the things they want to do and one win won’t be enough in 111 years or whatever it was so they’ll be keen for another one. It should be a cracking game and one we’re looking forward to.”
Hansen, who boasts a 92% win record during his four-year tenure, has been able to restore his first-choice second row pairing for Saturday’s return fixture with both Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick fit to start.
Add in the weight of history and the record between the two nations, Hansen’s comments can only be taken with a pinch of salt and construed purely as mind games ahead of a game New Zealand dare not lose.
Bookies have the All Blacks short-priced favourites to avenge the Soldier Field defeat and Hansen admits his players ‘let our history down’ in Chicago.
“One of the things important to us is our legacy, which is a fancy word for history and the boys will be aware of it,” he added.
“They’ll talk about it amongst themselves and as a team and our history and we let our history down in Chicago and didn’t perform to the level we expect.
“If you lose games and you play well, you get beaten by the better team but if you lose and don’t play well then it becomes very frustrating and we know we didn’t play anywhere near as well as we can play and we know we’ll have to play to that very high level if we’re going to win against Ireland because they’re a good side.”
New Zealand will train close to their Castleknock base this afternoon as the visitors put the finishing touches to their preparations for the penultimate game of their season.
The party line from the All Blacks camp has been that they are not out for revenge although Hansen explained that his players will have no shortage of motivation come Saturday teatime.
“The motivation should look after itself every week,” Hansen offered. “I always laugh at articles not only from people like yourselves but others who go ‘oh yeah he’s a good motivator’.
“If you can’t motivate yourself you shouldn’t be in an international team. There’s a lot of people who know they didn’t play well a couple of weekends ago and they’ll be disappointed because they’re highly competitive athletes.
“Motivation will be high, I don’t think it will be a problem. Complacency certainly won’t be a problem.
“I don’t think it’s my job to motivate them, it’s my job along with the coaching staff and management to create an environment where they can use that motivation to go out and perform to the best of their ability.
“Give them strategies and an environment where it’s not only a place to learn but have good fun because we know when we learn and have good fun in equal amounts we get a good perforamance.”
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