Henshaw: We must rival All Black mentality

Robbie Henshaw says Ireland must develop a New Zealand state of mind if they are to have any chance of winning this year’s Rugby World Cup.

The Leinster and Ireland midfielder missed most of this year’s Six Nations through injury, leaving him plenty of time to catch up on some TV .

Watching Amazon’s documentary All Or Nothing: New Zealand All Black, helped the former Connacht man to learn something about how the All Blacks deal with pressure and he says Ireland’s players could learn a lesson from how the double world champions perform when everyone wants to take them down a notch.

He said:

It was tough to watch the Six Nations from the sidelines, I just wanted to be there and try to help out, it was tough.

“I don’t know why things went how they did, I think maybe just the way teams are coming for us now, we’re top of Europe, both with Leinster and Ireland and you need to be able to deal with that, the day to day pressure.

“Every time you take to the field, you’re the number one, and teams are going to put out their best performance against you.

“From watching the All Blacks documentary on Amazon, they deal with it every day, that’s what they’ve learned to deal with.

“For where we are and where we want to be, we still have work to do. To stay there, that’s the challenge, and that’s something we’ll need to look at doing going into the World Cup and beyond.”