In the wake of their worst-ever defeat in Test rugby, just a fortnight out from their World Cup opener against France, All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has urged their supporters not to panic.
Despite his team’s humiliating 35-7 loss to the Springboks at Twickenham last Friday, Foster was not pushing any panic buttons and is adamant the three-time world champions are on track for their tournament opener against hosts France in Paris on September 8.
“We’re not panicking about that result,” said Foster. “We knew we were going to get challenged. It’s not the result we wanted. But I still believe in the plan.
“The group that we needed to play all played – Scott (Barrett) not as long as I would have liked – a fortnight out from a big test and at least we have a good litmus test of where we’re at.
“In many ways it was a perfect storm. We had seven players who hadn’t played in four weeks. They needed this game. I thought we looked rusty and quite frankly South Africa were outstanding in terms of how they pressured us in the areas they wanted to. That coincided with the red card (to Scott Barrett), and there goes the game.
“It was still a game we needed. We’ll make sure we use that really well in a fortnight’s time.”
Although Foster put up a brave face after that loss to their arch rivals, that match proved costly as first choice tighthead prop Tyrel Lomax is set to miss the World Cup opener against France in Paris after sustaining a nasty gash on his knee which required 30 stitches.
Apart from Lomax, Brodie Retallick (knee) and Shannon Frizell (hamstring) also missed the World Cup warm-up match with the Boks through injury, and are unlikely to be ready for the upcoming clash with France, while Ethan de Groot also had knee issues at Twickenham but is set to overcome that and be ready to take on Les Bleus.
Foster revealed that despite their heavy defeat against South Africa, there was still plenty of positivity in the All Blacks camp ahead of their World Cup campaign.
“I think we’re confident. It didn’t look like that, and I know we got a good spanking. We’re not hiding from that,” he said, before saying their decision to field their best available line-up against the Boks was one they would “live and die by”.
”It’s our job as a team to deal with that [psychological damage]. It’s actually OK to be psychologically down after a game like that because in the bigger picture it’s about what we wanted to achieve.
“We got everything we expected. We just didn’t deal with it as well as we expected. So we’ve got to fix that. We’ve got a lot of belief in what we’ve been doing, we know the first game of the World Cup is big, it’s going to be just like that, and we’ll probably be attacked in a very similar way.
“So we’ll take the view: OK, what happened? And how are we going to deal with that differently? We know we’re going to have to be at our best, particularly at the set-piece area.”
READ MORE: All Blacks: Scott Barrett cleared for World Cup opener after sending-off against Springboks
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