'Icing on the cake': All Blacks coach hails 'inspirational' Savea
REACTION: New Zealand coach Ian Foster hailed Ardie Savea’s performance as “icing on the cake” as the All Blacks crushed Wales 55-23 in a comprehensive eight tries to two victory in Cardiff.
Savea was part of a dominant All Black pack that carried effectively and bossed the breakdown, the No.8 diving over for a well-deserved try and also producing an outrageous dummy to set up Aaron Smith’s second five-pointer.
“He’s playing pretty good. For someone who hasn’t played for a while, he didn’t show any rust out there at all,” Foster said of Savea.
“He carried strong, he’s an inspirational part of this team, he leads really, really well off the field through his actions.
“When you see your loose forwards play like that, it’s always going to be reflective of a dominant pack up front.”
New Zealand raced to a 17-0 lead before Wales responded to make it 22-13 at half-time.
In the second period the visitors pulled away in style in a packed Millennium Stadium.
“He was able to put a little bit of icing on the cake,” Foster said of Savea’s individual try before adding of the forward’s comic-style dummy pass: “He’s suckered me on the training field, too.
“He likes expressing himself and we quite like it when he expresses himself.”
#ICYMI: Ardie Savea delivered a back row masterclass to help New Zealand extend their winning streak over Wales 👇#Wales #NewZealand #AllBlacks #WALvNZL https://t.co/sp9igk6kPy
— rugby365.com (@rugby365com) November 6, 2022
Efficiency and patience
Foster, whose All Blacks wrap up their November Series with Tests against Scotland and England, said they hadn’t expected such a positive scoreline.
“I just loved the efficiency of how we went about it,” he said. “I loved the patience we had, Wales stayed in the game for long periods and put us under pressure but we rode through that… and we had a good scoreline at the end, we’re pretty pleased.
“We didn’t try and overplay our hand, they put a lot of pressure on us, and that didn’t fluster us.”
Foster added: “We’ve been building nicely through the second half of the Rugby Championship… and we really wanted to start without dropping a level.”
But the New Zealand coach insisted thoughts had not already been focused on next year’s Rugby World Cup in France.
“Test matches are about the here and now and for us it’s always been about getting that balance between looking to the future but also knowing that every match is vital,” he said.
“Nothing prepares you better for 12 months’ time by playing well and getting good results now and there’s some good stuff there.”
Wales coach Wayne Pivac admitted that his side had bowed under the relentless All Blacks pressure, unable to “keep it in an arm wrestle”.
Losing streak continues
The heavy defeat means Wales’ long wait for a first win over the All Blacks since 1953 goes on, the Kiwis have won 33 consecutive meetings.
“We wanted a fast start and we didn’t get that,” said Pivac. “We were very pleased to get back in the game, but then New Zealand were good around half-time.
“We started the second half as we hoped, by scoring first. Unfortunately after that, we weren’t able to exit. That was disappointing to concede and from there, we chased the game.”
Pivac faces a tough couple of weeks, with matches against Argentina, Georgia and Australia to come in the Welsh capital.
“They’ve got speed of ball in our 22. We weren’t able to do that. Like all good New Zealand teams, they did well at the breakdown. We’ll look at that for next week,” he said.
“There were a lot of good individual performances but we needed to be physical. That’s partly because of where we’re at in our season compared to them.
“There were moments to win the scoreboard area. We’ve got to make sure when we get into a game like that, we keep up the pressure rather than let them in.”
