Monday 24th September 2007
All Black number eight Rodney So'oialo admitted on Monday that his team was a far cry from its best in the 40-0 win over Scotland at the weekend.
He explained that the World Cup favourites were just not clinical enough, which was partly due to a lack of concentration during certain periods of the game.
"There was a tendency to not fully concentrate on basics, like catching the ball," So'oialo told the BBC.
The loose-forward repeated the same old rhetoric that the team would asses things and make sure it improved on its performance in the next match against Romania.
"We'll look at it and make sure it's a lot better the next time we play.," he said.
The fact that the All Blacks needed to concentrate for longer periods in the game is something captain Richie McCaw told the press last week already. Following the less than perfect performance against Scotland, one has to wonder if being in a weak Pool won't hamper their title hopes.
"We can't afford to make those mistakes in the rest of the tournament," admitted So'oialo.
The All Blacks will seek to iron out those little errors that marred their victory over Scotland when they meet Romania in Toulouse on Saturday - they need to iron those errors out.
Veteran hooker Anton Oliver admitted that although the All Blacks got off to a decent start at Murrayfield, it certainly wasn't ideal.
"The first 20 minutes or so was right on the job, everything was done well, but I think we might have to be a bit more structured in the way we play it," said Oliver.
"The better teams will have a better defence and be fast and convert some of those mistakes that we made here into points.
"One of the main attributes that will win this World Cup is making as few mistakes as possible. If we keep on making as many as here [against Scotland] then we won't win it," added Oliver.
While he gave credit where it was due - Scotland weren't entirely awful - he acknowledged that there was still much work to do for Graham Henry's charges if they harboured any aspirations of breaking their 20-year World Cup drought.
"Scotland were pretty good. I've played here a few times and Scotland have never rolled over. They've got a lot of character but we made life hard for ourselves with a lot of inaccuracies," he concluded.
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