Steve Hansen says the All Blacks are holding back on their ‘A game’ and will roll out the complete package in the knockout stages of the World Cup.
The holders were never expected to be truly threatened in a relatively lightweight Pool C and accordingly wrapped up wins over Argentina – the only team to test them in a match they won 26-16 – Namibia and Georgia to qualify for the last eight with a game to spare.
But although never in danger of losing, New Zealand never looked convincing, which according to coach Hansen was to be expected.
Winning by cricket scores doesn’t help, he argued, and the All Blacks were testing themselves under various scenarios to prepare for the sudden-death matches ahead.
“Clearly we’re keeping some things up our sleeve, which we think is the sensible thing,” Hansen said. “As we get closer to the quarter-final and sudden death we’ll bring our whole game.”
If Hansen is right, it doesn’t get any closer to the quarter-final than Friday’s last pool match, which means Tonga are in for a torrid time. Scrum-half Aaron Smith said he was “pretty disappointed” with New Zealand’s last match, a 43-10 win over Georgia.
“It was a really big game for us and we’re just building,” Smith explained. “It was a tough watch but an exciting watch too because you could see we are getting close to achieving what we wanted to.
“We trained it all week. We still wanted to do what we planned on the field and as a player and part of that game I was just a little gutted we couldn’t execute it as well.
“I think for that first 20 or 30 minutes it was really working and then we weren’t able to adjust to the way they changed it.”
