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Full transcript: All Blacks coach Steve Hansen offers to go outside with reporter to give him a 'rugby education'

October 27, 2019

Hansen said if the reporter wanted to go outside, he’d give him a rugby education. (Source: Other)

During the post-mortem of the All Blacks' Rugby World Cup exit, Steve Hansen didn't take kindly to a question from a New Zealand reporter regarding the hunger of the team.

The question was posed by Newshub's Andrew Gourdie to Kieran Read, and prompted a terse response from the New Zealand coach afterwards. 

Emotion was clearly running high for the men in black, but Hansen's answer has created headlines around the rugby world.

Here's the full exchange from Yokohama.

Andrew Gourdie: "Kieran, Steve mentioned before… he said we needed to get hungry and desperate before it was too late. From your point of view, from the players' point of view I suppose, did the team turn up with the right attitude tonight?"

Kieran Read: "Yeah, I think we did. You've seen how hard we worked out there. Definitely the boys really wanted it. I think with the detail of the match it didn't go our way but the work rate and how much we really wanted it was there. You could see it even in the first half when you could see we came back and hung in there. It's really gutting when it doesn't go your way. It's a hard thing to take and we're all hurting."

Hansen: "I'd just like to clear that up. I think it's quite a disrespectful question to suggest that the All Blacks turned up not being hungry. They were desperate to win the game. Because I asked them at halftime to get hungrier doesn't mean to say they didn't turn up pretty hungry. There's a big difference and if you want to spend some time outside I'll give you a rugby education on that one. But to turn up and say an All Blacks team comes to the semifinal of a Rugby World Cup with the amount of ability and the history it has behind it …that's not hungry, that's a pretty average question."

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