VIDEO: Showboating Ioane absolved of blame for dropped 'try'
REACTION: New All Black coach Ian Foster has refused to lay any blame on Rieko Ioane for drawing the game after his awful mistake of blowing a certain try by dropping the ball en-route to scoring what would have been a certain try.
New Zealand was leading 8-3 towards the end of the first half in Wellington, when they managed a turnover from a Wallaby error at an attacking line-out. They utilized this to perfection in running the ball 65 metres from the point of error downfield to the Wallaby’s tryline.
Ioane who is normally one of the best finishers in the game with his traditional dive and forcing the ball down sadly lost control of the ball on the way to dotting it down – with the TMO finding it to have been lost forward after reviewing the incident.
“It would have been useful [to extend the lead at half-time],” Foster told reporters.
“He is [Ioane] feeling pretty frustrated with himself.
“He’s a confident young man. He’ll learn from that one thing but can also focus on a whole lot of other good things he did in that game too.”
Foster was quick to add that there had been several opportunities wasted so they couldn’t point to a single error that caused them to only draw the game and not win it.
There was also chances in a long injury time which included the setting of a possible drop goal or capitalising on space they had created out wide.
“If you don’t take your chances, they come back to bite you,” he said.
“We had chances to win the game in that last 10 minutes and we weren’t good enough to execute.
“It’s a message to us all that test rugby is back and if you’re not good enough then you won’t get what you want.”
Source: Independent.co.uk
