Wallabies vice captain Will Genia has defended his fullback Kurtley Beale by saying that the whole team should be criticized instead of singling out Beale.
rugbyweek
Beale was the Wallabies biggest culprit for Australian errors as a number of times he coughed up possession and missed the tackle that allowed Israel Dagg’s opening try.
“Kurtley is disappointed as much as everyone else is,” Genia said.
“He made errors but we all did. They all compounded to put us under pressure. Obviously it was uncharacteristic from Kurtley and you can comfort him but it is a group effort. ”
“We all made mistakes and we’re all disappointed.”
Genia was blunt when asked about the Wallabies overall lacklustre performance.
“The second try they scored they shouldn’t have scored, it was just lazy,” he said.
“We didn’t take width in defence early, we shouldn’t get beaten on the outside like that and miss that one-on-one tackle.
“That’s just I think a poor effort.”
He added of the Wallabies’ sluggish start: “We just didn’t trust how we wanted to play in the first half.
“We spoke about not wanting to play too much footy in our end … but to their credit that’s what they do best and force you to play and we got sucked right in and made those errors.
“But we saw in the second half when we trusted what we wanted to do we were a little bit better and got ourselves into the game.”
Wallabies coach Robbie Deans has promised an improved performance at Eden Park where Australia have not beaten New Zealand since 1986.
“We have to be better, and that wouldn’t be too hard I wouldn’t think to be fair,” Deans told Sportal.
“Some of the errors out there today were not acceptable under any circumstance in any competition.”
“We’ll definitely be better next week, without a doubt.
“We showed when we did produce some pressure we got a return but the problem is every time we got in the 22 the All Blacks were conceding penalties, so they were allowing the scoreboard to turn over by three whereas when they got down there they were turning it over by seven, that was the big difference.”
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen said his side would prepare thoroughly for Eden Park after slackening off and nearly being beaten in the second Test against Ireland in June.
“It’s about going home, staying humble, keeping our feet firmly on the ground and not too much back slapping,” Hansen said.
“We’ve got an opportunity here to keep it (the Bledisloe Cup) if we prepare well and make sure we do what we have to do in a genuine fashion.
“And then if we front up on Saturday night with the right attitude, we give ourselves plenty of opportunity to do that because we have quite a lot of talent in the team.
“But if we go home and think we’ve done the job already, that’s a recipe for disaster.”