Hansen takes it on the chin

IT can’t have been easy after all the high hopes and hype generated by the big victory over Scotland.

But the Welsh coach Steve Hansen took it on the chin yesterday when he faced a media throng that included a whole host of former Welsh stars, ranging from the great Bleddyn Williams in the 50s through Gerald Davies in the 70s right up to Derwyn Jones of the 1990s.

To a man, they had expected a whole lot more from the Dragons. Hansen, to his credit, didn’t flinch and called it as he saw it. Ireland were too good, he accepted, in every phase of play and the scoreline of 36-15 was a fair reflection of how the game went.

“The Irish pack certainly dominated us”, he started. “The three tries from the line-outs epitomised that. There were other problems as well. Our first time tackling was very poor and a lot of our back and broken play was lateral. One of the fundamentals of the game is that you must win up front and go forward and we did neither.

“It’s a well-known fact that this is a very good Irish pack. It’s been around for some time now and been competing against the best and doing a lot of damage against the best for a while. They just reiterated that today and the young guns were outstanding.”

Hansen insisted that Wales could come back from this although they won’t feel as good about a visit from France on Saturday week as they did before yesterday.

He accepted that “while it was very disappointing to lose like this, it would be even worse not to learn lessons out of it. It doesn’t stop the side from improving. It doesn’t mean to say that the team hasn’t improved. We said right from the beginning that we haven’t arrived yet and we’re still going to have a bad day and that from those days we will learn something. Today was reality and a harsh lesson.”

Hansen, of course, relinquishes the Welsh post at the end of the season to return to his native New Zealand as forwards coach of the All Blacks. Some Welsh colleagues were quite derisive about his prospects given yesterday’s poor performance but Hansen wasn’t having any of that.

“We’ve got to win the fight up front and be a lot more aggressive, we’ve got to compete in the line-outs, and if we do stay on the ground, we’ve got to make sure the opposition doesn’t get a driving maul going,” he said.

“You’ve got to make your tackles and go forward. You can’t move the ball laterally and expect the likes of O’Driscoll to go asleep. He caused us to be penalised or took ball off us more times than I’d like to remember today. It’s the harsh reality of professional rugby. You learn from it and move on.”

Welsh skipper Martyn Williams also paid tribute to the Irish forwards, accepting that “they got their tails up in the first-half after which they were 21 points ahead and we were chasing the game, something that’s not easy to do at Lansdowne Road. But the damage was done in the first 30 minutes.”

And the last word to Steve Hansen: “There mustn’t be any talk about a false dawn or any nonsense like that about Welsh rugby. We are not back in the dark ages.”