Henry not happy

All Black coach Graham Henry believes that his side is a little off the pace in terms of their own expectations at the moment after a narrow victory against South Africa and a loss to Australia.

“We’re not very happy with where we’re at, as far as our form is concerned. We thought we were just OK in South Africa and below standard in Australia.

“We need to step up in these next two test matches, that’s a major objective. Hopefully the fellas will be able to do that. They’re pretty analytical. They’re assessing what has happened over the last couple of weeks and are trying to improve.

“The response has been very positive. (The loss) is a good thing in many respects. A bit of a wakeup call, a rethink. What are we on about here?”

“We were off the pace (against Australia ten days ago). I don’t think we’ve played insufficient football to be off the pace, we just weren’t right there.

“If you’ve got a side sitting in Melbourne for two weeks waiting for you and you’ve been to South Africa and coming back to play, you can’t afford to be 85-90 (percent). You’ve got to be 100, and we weren’t.

“Let’s just buckle down and make sure we do our preparation properly. It only takes three or four (players) not to and you’re off the pace by 10 percent.

“We’ve got a lot of areas we need to spruce up on so it was a timely reminder.”

He dismissed the idea that the Springbok team on tour in New Zealand would be easy-beats in Saturday’s Tri Nations clash in Christchurch.

“I think they have got a pretty good side out here. They’ve got Super 14 finalists and winners in their squad and a lot of good rugby players. They’re trying for an opportunity to make their World Cup squad and they are dangerous as they showed in the first 20 minutes in Sydney.

“Perhaps they didn’t use the ball efficiently enough to win the game. You can’t win test matches if you don’t use the ball and the flyhalf missed kicks that he’d normally land that would have won the game.”

Henry spoke about the All Black selections for Saturday’s Test match.

“We’ve introduced a few players who haven’t started a test for a while – Doug Howlett, Reuben Thorne, Keith Robinson, Kevan Mealamu, Piri Weepu.

“It was always the intention to play them during the Tri-Nations and get them onto the field as starting players – so that hasn’t changed.”