All Blacks boss Ian Foster has spoken out about centre Rieko Ioane’s costly mistake in their riveting Bledisloe Test against the Wallabies in Wellington on Sunday.
The enthralling showdown ended in a 16-16 draw, but it could’ve been a different story altogether had Ioane not butchered what should have been a regulation finish on the tryline just before half-time.
The 23-year-old All Blacks centre appeared destined to score a counter-attacking try on the stroke of half-time after he was handed the ball 20m from the Wallabies line with no defenders in sight, but he failed to ground the ball as he dove in one-handed.
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‘It would’ve been useful,’ Foster admitted in his post-match press conference.
‘He’s feeling pretty frustrated with himself but that’s one of those little lessons players have to go through and I thought he had a reasonably strong game besides that.
‘That’s why they call it a Test match, you’ve got to take those little moments and when you get a little bit sloppy in those moments, it can come back and bite you.’
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‘We had a chance to win the game in the last 10 minutes and we weren’t good enough to execute on it. You don’t dwell on errors in Test matches, there were a lot of errors before that and there were a lot of errors after that.
‘It certainly would’ve been nice but it’s not the reason we drew. You make an error, you move on. He’s confident young man but he’s got to learn from that one little thing.’
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