Hansen: Boks are very beatable
12/07/2024 01:55 AM
The Springboks are two-time defending world champions and won the 2024 Rugby Championship, but former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen doesn’t believe South Africa is bulletproof.
"They're very beatable, they've been beaten on a regular basis. Ireland beat them, New Zealand should have beaten them and Argentina beat them," he told Martin Devlin on DSPN. "But the more they win, the more the myth grows and it makes it harder the more their confidence grows.”
Hansen compiled an 87% win rate as coach of New Zealand between 2012 and 2019, a term that included 16 Tests against the Boks for a 13-1-2 record. The All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup under Graham Henry, and Steve Hansen was promoted to the helm the following season and guided one of the greatest teams of the professional era to a successful title defence in 2015.
"They rely a lot on their big men and, if they lose some of those big men, have they got big men to replace them? So far they have,” said Hansen, now heading up Toyota Verblitz in Japan Rugby League One.
"They'll force everybody else to become better at what they're doing, just like what we did in that period from about 2011 through to 2019 – we forced other teams to have to get better in areas they didn't want to be.”
Photo: ©Chris Ricco/BackpagePix
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