Steve Hansen Offers Laughable Excuse For Defeat To Ireland

Really Steve? Come on.

Ireland pulled off a historic win over the All Blacks in Chiacgo a couple of weeks back, shocking the rugby world. Joe Schmidt’s men ran in five tries on their way to a memorable 40-29 win over the world champions.

Ireland were clearly the better side on the day, and while the case can be made that New Zealand were missing some of their star players, Ireland didn’t have a full compliment of stars to choose from either.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has spoken about that loss today, and while he doesn’t use the missing players as an excuse, he has used a pretty odd, somewhat laughable excuse for the loss instead.

[The players were] spending a lot of time worrying about what the Cubs were doing. There were five million people at the parade and most of our blokes were there. I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t [a contributing factor]. Is that what they normally do on a Friday before a test match? No and you can get caught up in that stuff.

I am saying it is a possibility that comes into it. Only the individual will be able to tell you that.

Hansen did however offer Ireland some credit for their win, but also cited the All Blacks preparations.

There is no doubt that Ireland had a good performance and they knew how they wanted to play. But we didn’t respond to that. We have had a good look at what we did or didn’t do and there is certainly room for improvement.

On the surface you look at it and say we prepared pretty good. But you have heard me talk about how preparation has to be bone deep and how bone deep was it? Only the individual can tell you but the result tells you it wasn’t bone deep.

You know 16 of the 21 errors we made were avoidable; 12 penalties were avoidable. So if you don’t get your attitude right, you don’t get to play well and I don’t think attitude will be a problem this week.

All eyes down turn to this Saturday. Can Ireland do it again? If they do, New Zealand have no excuses this time round.