Bledisloe Cup Rugby: Ian Foster makes a strong assessment of the All Blacks’ loss to the Wallabies

All Blacks coach Ian Foster has bluntly assessed his team’s performance in their loss to the Wallabies in Brisbane on Saturday night, admitting there will be a few things they will just have to assume.

The All Blacks fell in a 24-22 defeat at the hands of their transtasman rivals in a chaotic game in which both teams received a red and yellow card.

But while the Australians rebounded from a 43-5 loss a week earlier, Foster said Saturday night’s score was more a reflection of his team’s performance than a turnaround for the Australians.

“To be honest, I didn’t see a big difference in the Wallabies,” Foster said, speaking the day after the game. “I thought the first 20, other than the first down we conceded – and good for the Wallabies for that – but I thought we seemed reasonably cool on the ball, we were creating things; I don’t think we could potentially go back to get the ball into the space we needed. .

“We’ll take some of that on the chin. It can be combinations and people come back, I understand all of that.”

In an exciting game with a series of skirmishes, the All Blacks did not respond as Foster would have liked and were unable to capitalize on a series of promising periods.

While there are many things to work on heading into this weekend’s game against Argentina, Foster said there were bright spots in the loss.

“I’m not sure how the narrative goes on this game, but I was very proud of a lot of things,” said Foster. “We were under a lot of pressure, we endured a lot of pressure, physically we stayed on the ground for a while.

“But you could see that our game tightened. We narrowed in our perspective, we narrowed in the way we played, and that to me is an indication that we are not seeing things clearly and responding to the opposition instead. to be proactive and force them to start responding to us.

“You can’t keep hitting yourself against a brick wall when you’re frustrated because it makes it easier for them to be physically active with you. That was my frustration – we lost the ability to step back and say ‘Okay, what can we do here to expand a bit our game and change the image? ‘

“There is a great deal of excitement and feeling every time the Wallabies play the All Blacks, and [Saturday] the night is a classic case. When people talk about dead rubber and all that, clearly our number one priority was to win the Bledisloe, we did it, but we had to back that up and really go for the Three Nations, and we also needed to make another statement against the Wallabies and we didn’t. “.