All Blacks' set-piece attack 'pretty average'

RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP SPOTLIGHT: All Black scrumhalf Aaron Smith has pinpointed his team’s set-piece attack as an area that needs improvement ahead of their Test against Australia in Auckland on Saturday.

The All Blacks recorded a 38-13 win over Australia in the first Bledisloe Cup encounter of the year in Sydney last weekend.

However, Steve Hansen’s side was far from perfect during the 80 minutes, especially in the first half where they struggled to find their rhythm on attack.

“It will be a lot more difficult than last week,” Smith told stuff.co.nz.

“It’s an exciting game, we’re playing at home this time, which is awesome, but it’s still a massive challenge.

“They’ve got threats across the park and it just starts again.

“We can take a lot of positives from the weekend, but there are still heaps of learnings and opportunities for us to get better and that’s what we’re focusing on after our review this morning [Monday].

The All Blacks dominated the line-outs and scrums in Sydney, but they failed to take full advantage of that dominance on attack.

“We don’t want to give away too much, to give them (Australia) any fuel or insight,” Smith added.

“But we want to improve our game and get it to a standard of where we want to be.

“You just have to look at our set-piece attack firstly, it was pretty average and we got nothing off that.”

Meanwhile, New Zealand will be without Rieko Ioane and Ryan Crotty for the clash in Auckland,

Ioane picked up a hamstring injury, while Crotty was knocked out after a head clash with teammate Jack Goodhue.

Source: stuff.co.nz