Henry backs Blacks scrum after de Villiers ‘cheating’ jibes

NEW ZEALAND coach Graham Henry has refused to get into a war of words with South Africa counterpart Peter de Villiers after the latter accused the All Blacks of cheating in the scrums.

De Villiers has accused loose-head prop Tony Woodcock of manipulating the pre-hit routine to prevent the front rows being stationary and of boring in on Springboks tight-head CJ van der Linde during last Saturday’s Tri-Nations match in Wellington.

The Springboks coach said the All Blacks caused the “walking around of all the scrums by using their loosehead prop to scrum in and at times when he didn’t scrum in he just came up. That gave them the momentum to come in around us.”

He was also unhappy that referee Stuart Dickinson had not penalised them during Saturday’s clash, which the All Blacks won 19-8. “They were blown for that in the previous games and we were assured the referee would look at that,” said De Villiers. “It didn’t happen.”

But Henry refused to retaliate after naming his team for the second match against the Boks in Dunedin.

“We get it week after week. We pride ourselves on our scrum and we work very hard on it. That’s all I’d like to say,” Henry said.

Forwards coach Steve Hansen added: “Each week we keep on hearing people complain about our scrum. We’ve got a good scrum, we want to scrum and now we look forward to scrummaging on Saturday.”

De Villiers is reportedly keen to speak to International Rugby Board (IRB) referee manager Paddy O’Brien about the scrums.

But Henry was happy enough to have made his feelings on last Saturday’s match known, including the off-the-ball treatment his players, such as Dan Carter, received, through the referees report which is completed after every match.

“We write a report every week and one of the parts of the report is the scrum report which is written by Mike Cron.

“He writes the report on the scrum and that goes through to Paddy and to the IRB and the rest of the countries in the tournament. They get our information every week about us and the opposition and that’s the right channel for that sort of stuff to go through.”

Henry has made two changes to his starting line-up for Saturday’s game with lock Anthony Boric making his first start in place of the suspended Brad Thorn, while John Afoa returns from a knee injury to replace veteran prop Greg Somerville at tight-head.

New Zealand: Muliaina; Sivivatu, Smith, Nonu, Wulf; Carter, Ellis; Woodcock, Hore, Afoa, Boric, Williams, Thomson, So’oialo (c), Kaino.

Reserves: Mealamu, Tialata, O’Neill, Lauaki, Cowan, Donald, MacDonald.