Mack Hansen: 'Honest chats' had after Ireland defeat to All Blacks

Hansen believes Ireland's rivalry with the All Blacks is not dead.

RESILIENT: Ireland winger Mack Hansen says his side's loss against the All Blacks on Friday "wasn't us". Picture: ©INPHO/Bryan Keane

Mack Hansen has backed his Ireland team to rebound from last Friday’s defeat to the All Blacks in the same way they responded to a first Test loss away to South Africa’s world champions during the summer.

The Six Nations champions came out second-best in their first game, in Pretoria, four months ago and responded with a gutsy and dramatic win second time around when Ciaran Frawley was the drop goal hero in Durban.

They will need that resilience against Argentina this week given the paucity of their performance against a Kiwi side that added to the pain inflicted late last year when edging Ireland in a pulsating World Cup quarter-final in Paris.

Losing was one thing but the error-laden performance put in by the hosts in Dublin was astonishing. It has understandably led to some amount of hand-wringing among a public accustomed to so much better.

Hansen doesn’t sound worried.

“I’ve seen some things and people saying the rivalry is dead. But people forget we recently beat them twice in a row and the rivalry wasn’t dead then, was it? They’ve got the last two but we have a good win rate over them. People are always very eager to jump on you when you’re down. It’s like in South Africa, nobody gave them a hope after the first test.

“And what happens? They come back and win it. That’s the best thing about this group. The outside noise is outside noise and nobody knows what goes in here, how hard we work and how resilient we are. People can chat away. The people who know us know, unfortunately, it was one of those weeks but we’re ready to bounce back.” 

Farrell is known to have read the riot act to his squad after the game in Pretoria in July. There seems to have been less heat this time. The dressing-room at half-time on Friday was said to be calm rather than chaotic.

That has fed through into the reviews this week.

“There weren’t really hard chats, just honest chats,” said Hansen. “And we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t good enough and also that it just wasn’t us. So this week we’re looking to right a lot of wrongs and no better place to do it then back in the Aviva in front of a home crowd. Really excited for this week more than anything.” 

That litany of errors was high on the review list. Hansen shared his disappointment at one he made himself when speaking to the media on Monday lunchtime and reiterated the point that now is not the time for the team to go into its “shell”.

As with everyone else in camp, he could look back at the two weeks leading up to it and know that the preparation was all on course and that made the resultant display all the more vexing and perplexing.

“That’s the disappointing thing,” he said, “it wasn’t us and how we’ve been playing for the last four or five years.” 

The Connacht wing spoke about his disappointment with the lack of spectacle that Ireland could offer a capacity crown last time against a New Zealand team that played a very smart and functional game on a night where the greasy conditions made handling that bit trickier.

Argentina were far more entertaining away to Italy the following day when putting up 50 points against the Azzurri and Felipe Contepomi’s side will ask no few questions of their own when they turn out at Ballsbridge.

“They're an exciting team. They throw the ball around a lot, one-to-15 they can all play, so it's a little bit of a different feel to last week.

“Not saying New Zealand don't do that, but Argentina are a bit like Fiji in the way that they don't mind throwing the ball around and trying to create stuff out of nothing, which they're really good at.

“Also Felipe has been really good with their strike plays, they've been really dangerous all over the park. So excited for the opportunity to try and beat them.”