All Blacks put spotlight on Peyper
RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP SPOTLIGHT: Seems like the All Blacks are doing everything in their might to prepare for the unpredictable behaviour of the officials.
The All Blacks might go into Saturday’s Rugby Championship opener against Australia as favourites, however, after a June packed with incident and TMO drama the side are all too wary of the officials’ contentious decisions said assistant coach Ian Foster.
During June, the All Blacks saw two controversial decisions go their way en route to their 3-0 sweep of France – the most notably the early red card to France fullback Benjamin Fall in Wellington.
While Australia’s 1-2 series defeat to Ireland was also eclipsed with controversy both on and off the field. The most prominent incident was Israel Folau’s one-match ban following his red card for a high tackle on Ireland skipper Peter O’Mahony during their final Test.
All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster told Stuff they had to anticipate tests could again swing on one or two decisions in the Rugby Championship and it was on the teams to adjust their play accordingly.
The opening Bledisloe test will be officiated by South Africa’s Jaco Peyper.
“That’s test match rugby,” Foster said, adding: “It always throws stuff up you hadn’t quite expected. There were a lot of cards talked about in our series, but that’s the game, it’s always been like that and you’ve got to deal with that.
“When you look over here [Australia] there was quite a bit of conversation about cards and aerial battles, but … our job as coaches is to analyse what happened when the ball was in play and both Ireland and Aussie played a strong physical game. The fact all three went to the wire shows how tight it was.
“We know they’ll take a bit of confidence out of that, and we know because it’s a Bledisloe in Sydney we’ve got to keep going up and up [in level]. There’s that nervous excitement from us which is where we should be.”
Foster, though, stopped short of placing the onus on “trigger-happy” officials to let the players decide these tests on the field.
“I don’t think they’re necessarily trigger-happy, I just think we’ve all got to adjust. There probably has to be a little bit of tweaking from them, but not much. The major tweak has got to be from behaviour on the park.
“We’ve got to make sure we are doing what we need to do to take those sort of decisions out of play.
“When you look at our series most people felt there shouldn’t have been a red card in Wellington. But it doesn’t change anything. As coaches, we’ve got to keep reacting and expect the unexpected things on the park and adjust, then worry about the politics of it later.”
@NZStuff
