Rugby World Cup 2023: The concerning area Steve Hansen will be scrutinising with All Blacks

Having popped up in the Wallabies camp before the tournament as a favour to his old mate Eddie Jones, only to then spend a few days this week in more familiar territory withthe All Blacks, Sir Steve Hansen has been a one-man headline machine at this Rugby World Cup.

The big question, of course, has been what the old maestro may have brought to both camps.

In the case of the Wallabies, it was probably a few sage observations about how they might be able to improve their on-field leadership – an area in which the Australians have fallen strangely far behind the best in the world - and with the All Blacks, there would have been a few classic one-liners masquerading as bonhomie and yet carrying an element of home truth.

This was Hansen’s way when he was head coach between 2012 and 2019 – a period in which the All Blacks won 89 per cent of their tests and became the first team in history to be crowned successive world champions.

No one, not Richie McCaw, Dan Carter, Conrad Smith, Ma’a Nonu, Jerome Kaino or Kieran Read, or any of the other veteran double World Cup winners had any sense of comfort when Hansen was coach.

He loved his players, protected them publicly but often berated them privately and so too was he expert at using humour with such ambiguity as to leave them wondering whether he was about to recommend them for a knighthood or drop them from the squad.

His was a force of personality regime as much as anything else and he famously, after the All Blacks had destroyed Ireland in his first game in charge, shredded McCaw at the team review with such ferocity to send the message that no one was beyond his wrath.

Maybe there was a touch of theatre about it all, the way the players had to sit through post-match debriefs in chairs that corresponded to the number they wore in the test, but it all helped create an environment where there was intense peer pressure to hold one another accountable and for a culture to build where standards could never be high enough.

Incumbent coach Ian Foster has his own style – his own methods to drive his players to get more out of themselves, but a short-sharp dose of Hansen this week will have reinforced the importance and value of having uncomfortable tension within the camp during this tournament.

The All Blacks’ next three tests are not so much a qualification process as they are a preparation phase.

The focus won’t be on making the last eight as such, but on being ready to perform at their best in the quarterfinal when they inevitably get there, and with the opposition, except perhaps for Italy, not conducive to bringing the best out of the All Blacks, they will have to make sure they do that themselves.

Hence the importance of Hansen being in camp this week, to serve up through the power of ambiguous comedy, a reminder that the senior players have a responsibility to drive the highest standards against Namibia and hold their peer group accountable to do the same.

No one area will come under more internal scrutiny than the scrum, which has creaked and then leaked penalties with enough regularity in the last two tests to sit as a genuine concern and the most obvious area in which standards need to improve.

Foster admitted as much when he said that the decision was made to select the same four props to play Namibia as featured against France and that the primary focus against the southern Africans will be restoring the set-piece to full health.

The All Blacks’ optimism about their prospects at this tournament is genuine, but also conditional on them being able to restore the edge to their scrummaging.

It is a facet of their game that has steadily improved since Jason Ryan arrived as forwards coach midway through last year, and one they felt was going to be a destructive weapon at this World Cup given the way the All Blacks scrummaged so dominantly throughout this year’s Rugby Championship.

But the last two tests have possibly surprised the coaches as, on balance, they have suggested the All Blacks’ scrum is not where it needs to be and is operating at around the merit level when the Springboks, France and probably Ireland are all regularly achieving excellence.

Standards needs to lift, and as much as the coaching team will do their part to get them higher, the players are going to have a major role to play in their own fate, by setting aside the quality of the opposition they face and holding each other accountable to ensure they uphold the standards that have defined the great All Blacks teams of the past.

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