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With fifth RWC near, Steve Hansen shares wisdom he's gained from previous campaigns

September 8, 2019

The coach has learned a thing or two from his roles with Wales and the All Blacks.

With a fifth and final Rugby World Cup on the horizon, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has learned a thing or two about how to approach the tournament.

The first lesson? The long-time coach says there's a big difference between matches.

"They're different than Test matches," Hansen said.

"You've got to pace yourself - you don't win the tournament in the first round and once you get to the knockout round, you've got to earn the right to come back and train on Monday."

Hansen coached Wales in 2003 before becoming Sir Graham Henry's assistant at the All Blacks for both 2007 and 2011. He was then in charge of the New Zealand squad for 2015 and will sign off in Japan later this month.

Since joining the All Blacks, a running theme the squad has embraced is "walking towards pressure" which Hansen says is another piece of wisdom he's gained in his time.

"There's a pressure that doesn't normally come - I talked about that when we did the team naming that there's a lot of pressure on everybody now because there's an expectation that we all want to win it.

New Zealand’s coach, who’s been involved in back-to-back World Cup victories, says "it’ll be interesting to see who can cope".

"I'm not saying you don't want to do that when you play Test matches but this is a bigger event."

When asked how he and the All Blacks handle pressure, Hansen was straight with his response.

"It only crushes you if you allow it to," he said.

"The first thing is you've got to acknowledge it's going to happen. It's there, it's there every day - it's the one constant that I've seen since with the All Blacks since the first time I ever entered the place to even today.

"You've got to work your way through that and you can either run away from that or walk towards it."

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