NZ Rugby speak out after home series defeat

By Liam Napier

New Zealand Rugby boss Mark Robinson has labelled the All Blacks' first home series defeat in 27 years unacceptable and says work will begin immediately with head coach Ian Foster to grasp how the team reached this position.

Robinson's statement came after the All Blacks cancelled a scheduled media conference on Sunday.

One day after the 32-22 third test loss to Ireland in Wellington consigned the All Blacks to their first home series defeat since 1994, a coach was scheduled to front media at their team hotel.

When media arrived, however, they were eventually told the stand-up had been cancelled.

Attempting to address widespread speculation and pressure on Foster and his All Blacks coaching team, Robinson suggested he would be involved in meeting with the team before their two-test tour of South Africa begins on August 7.

"Congratulations to the Irish team for their well-deserved win last night but clearly the performance across the series for the All Blacks was not acceptable as we know they have reflected. We all know there is a huge amount of work to do," Robinson said.

"Our focus now is to work with Ian and his team to understand thoroughly in advance of the Rugby Championship what is needed to improve performance and where to from here. We will begin this work immediately."

On Saturday night, after the All Blacks slumped to the fourth defeat from their past five tests, Foster deflected three questions about his future.

"I just want to talk about this test match," Foster said.

Asked for his message to disgruntled All Blacks fans as national anxiety reaches fever pitch, Foster attempted to divert attention to praising Ireland's efforts.

"New Zealand has to realise this is a very good Irish team and give them some credit," Foster said. "It would be disrespectful to not make that the number one item. They've come and achieved something pretty special and they deserve a bit of time in the sun for that.

"For us we're a group working hard. We've got a lot of belief in many of the solutions we've got but we've got to get better at executing them.

"We've been given a real marker in the sand for where we're at."

Despite mounting a second-half comeback that featured tries to Ardie Savea, Akira Ioane and Will Jordan to close within five points, the All Blacks' dire first-half performance left far too much ground to make up. After trailing 22-3 at the break, Foster struggled to explain why his side started poorly for the third successive week.

"Not really because we've talked a lot about it. For some reason we're not as calm, particularly defensively. It's more the defence where we're getting fidgety early, we're letting a few holes through. Ireland aren't a team that you can allow to get behind you. That is when they play an up-tempo game. We've done that and it's hurt us. We've worked on it but, again, they got that early momentum.

"The first half we got too loose at times. In the second half we carried, we were more direct, some of our counter-attack stuff was working well. There were a couple of times post line breaks we couldn't get our support quick enough on the man. Those moments hurt. We'll dig into that."

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission