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 said the nature of his side's defeat to the All Blacks on Friday "wasn't us". Picture: ©INPHO/Bryan Keane

Not the result Mack Hansen wanted last Friday night but then wearing the Ireland jersey again was a form of victory in itself.

The Connacht wing had fashioned a good number for himself in the national side up to late last year. Nine tries in 22 caps was just the skeleton on a body of work that, allied to his infectious personality, made him a firm favourite on the Test scene.

A dislocated shoulder in the New Year’s Day URC game against Munster changed all that. Hansen spent the rest of the season and much of the summer on the sidelines and missed a successful Six Nations defence and a shared Test series in South Africa.

It left him with a heightened sense of nervousness for the game against the All Blacks. Not because his mum and dad were in the stands having travelled over from Australia, but on the back of doubts that he would ever stand for the national anthem again.

It felt, he said, like a first cap again.

“You get to a period of being injured, especially as long as I was, that you never know if you will get the opportunity again. Things like that kind of go through your head, especially with the way the guys were playing: still winning Six Nations and winning tours (sic).

“A lot of guys really stepped up and played great, like Nashy [Calvin Nash] and Jamie [Osborne] and those sort of guys coming through. So, yeah, things like that do go through your head and to get it again was just another dream come true almost.” 

Returning for a game against the All Blacks was one to savour. Until it wasn’t.

Ireland’s performance was leagues below the standard they have surfed in recent times. Issues in the tackle, at the set piece, with their discipline and their handling conspired against them and left the 26-year old wing with a struggle to be involved.

Hansen felt like he finally started to get the ball in his hands some more in the last quarter but he had to go all the way back to his second cap three years ago to find a game where Ireland had failed to click to anything like the same degree.

"Maybe France in the Six Nations at the Stade de France [in 2021] we were a little bit overwhelmed by the spectacle, but all the other games we’ve been really good and maybe this is the first time it’s happened again.” 

There is no sense of gnawing concern from him.

The lineout issues? Nothing to send people to panic stations, he said. The handling errors were “so unlike” Ireland that it seems difficult to countenance a repeat. He talked about easy fixes and, correctly, how the Kiwis had been the smarter side on the night.

“You can’t take anything away from them. I thought they were a little bit more strategic than normal. When you think of New Zealand teams they throw the ball around a lot, attack from anywhere.

“They’ve been the best at that for a good while where I thought on the weekend they probably won the aerial battle against us and kicked a little bit better and strategically I thought they were pretty switched on.” 

Andy Farrell was dismissive after the defeat when asked if it could dent confidence in a side that has now lost three of its last five games. Hansen backed that up with something similar. The trick is believing it’s a one-off but doing the detail to ensure that is actually the case.

Farrell is known to have read the riot act to his squad after the defeat to South Africa 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 ahead of the clash with Argentina on Friday. 

“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.”

A laidback character off the pitch, he spoke of a hurt but an absence of anger. He touched on the need for players to avoid going into their shells and any kneejerk reactions from outside the camp are clearly not being entertained inside it.

“I’ve seen some things and people saying the [Kiwi] 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.”