Hansen: France are the best in defence
JUNE SPOTLIGHT: All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen believes his team’s attack will have to be at its very best to crack the French defence at Eden Park on Saturday.
The All Blacks take on France in the first of three Tests this weekend and Hansen is expecting a massive challenge, despite France being ranked a lowly eighth in the world right now after poor performances over the last few years.
“We are about to play a French side who are statistically the best defensive side in world rugby at the moment, running about 92.5 in tackle completion,” said Hansen.
“They are only letting in one and a half tries a game, so we got a massive challenge on our hands and one that we are really excited about facing.”
Hansen has received a lot of criticism for setting up a couple of three-day All Black camps during Super Rugby to get his players up to speed with what is required for the June series.
The All Blacks lost Sonny Bill Williams and Tim Perry to injury in those camps, while Jordan Taufua also tweaked an old strain.
“We’d just be setting ourselves an impossible task if we hadn’t had the camps,” said Hansen.
“What a lot of people might not understand is you’ve got five groups of players coming into one environment. They have three months to get ready to play their first [Super Rugby] game; we’ve [All Blacks] got seven days.
“To not have the camps and get that same information, we’d get to Saturday with overload. We’ve got to limit that and get to Thursday and not worry too much about what we don’t know and get excited about what we do know.”
@AllBlacks
