New Zealand coach Steve Hansen has tried hard to talk up Australia as a “very dangerous beast” going into the second round Rugby Championship match in Dunedin.
But even after replacing the 95-Test veteran Franks – who pulled out Thursday because of a troublesome Achilles – with the four-Test Laulala, the All Blacks should again be far too strong.
For while Hansen has talked up the wounded Wallabies, his real focus has been on demanding the world champion All Blacks atone for their sub-par end to the first Test.
After scoring eight tries in the first 55 minutes, a sloppiness crept into their game that allowed Australia to come back with four tries of their own.
“You’ve got to keep working, you’ve got to keep your attention on what you want to do rather than taking a big sigh and a breath,” Hansen said on the need to play hard for 80 minutes.
“The opposition are going to keep working so you have to too. Our attention went to the scoreboard ... as a result of that we threw poor passes, our skill execution was poor, our defence was poor. There wasn’t too much that was good, really.”
New Zealand attack coach Ian Foster believes part of the All Blacks success stems from the Wallabies being too predictable with their game plans.
“They have been consistent with that for a couple of years, to be fair,” he said.
“We kind of expected to see what we saw in the midfield Will they change it? I am not sure.”
Hansen has largely kept faith in the same starting line-up apart from the late injury to Franks and the return of hooker Dane Coles, who has been cleared of the concussion symptoms which sidelined him for most of the year.
The Wallabies, plagued by attack inaccuracies and a porous defence last week, have made three changes, including the gamble of replacing lock Rory Arnold with Rob Simmons.