Team Naming Thursday - All Blacks test edition

This morning Steve Hansen announced an unchanged starting lineup for this weekends second test in Christchurch. He has however gone for a more experienced bench with Piri Weepu, Andrew Hore and Tony Woodcock poised and ready to make an impact from the bench.

Since Shag took over the top job last year, its clear that its not his style to pull wholesale changes after a disappointing performance so it will be up to the 15 to prove their worth and perhaps secure a position in the test matches later in the year. 

Last weeks game was a dogged test match affair and with the French dominating the breakdown, Hansen has left his forward pack to rectify their performance from last weekend and stamp their authority over the power of the French.

One player who has been heavily scrutinized after last weeks game will be looking to improve is Aaron Cruden. His goal kicking and general territory kicking was a bit off, but im sure he will bounce back and improve. It is this type of series that is going to put our younger and less experienced guys in a better position as we move towards the 2015 World Cup.

Israel Dagg will again be under the spotlight, after a good performance in test one, we are all hoping he can find some of his razzle dazzle to keep the French guessing and set up some of our fantastic backs.

The French team on Saturday we massive step up from their 6 nations campaign and continued the tradition of saving their best for the All Blacks. If they continue to play with that intensity and passion in the last two test matches, it could go down to the wire.

After watching the Stuff rugby podcast with Marc Hinton and Jeff Wilson, the question was asked, as a country are we too demanding of our All Blacks, are our expectations too high, and should we just take a win and be happy. 

I certainly feel that we can be sometimes a bit too critical of our national team, the standards that they set on the field can sometimes be overlooked after a slip up. Saturdays game, while it was not the greatest performance by our team, by all accounts the French could well have upset us and taken the win, but it says a lot about the culture and character of the All Black environment to win ugly.

Lets face it, the first test match of a season is never going to be a perfect performance, you always need a start point to build from. 

I cannot wait to go along to the test match this weekend, after missing out on tickets to the Irish game last year. An All Black test match is always a special occasion, one i dont take for granted and make sure that i soak up the atmosphere and the spectacle. Lets make sure we all get behind our team, win, loss, draw.

All black everything.