Japan coach Jamie Joseph has fired a shot at the quality of the All Blacks team that narrowly beat his side 38-31 on Saturday night.
The All Blacks clung on for a win against a valiant Japanese team who came close to making history, getting within four points of New Zealand in the second half.
The Barrett brothers, Sam Whitelock, Ardie Savea and Rieko Ioane, were just some of the key players that didn’t suit up for the All Blacks in the Tokyo test. But by any standards, the win was still underwhelming.
Japan will play England next on November 13 before taking on world number two France the following week.
Following the match, Joseph, a former All Black was confident in saying that his team would be up against greater competition in England when they head to Twickenham.
“The key for us really is to go to England now and replicate that performance against a better side,” Joseph said.
He went on to say that the All Blacks have lost their invincibility as a team that used to be feared by their opponents.
“Everyone is thinking about the All Blacks, and that’s part of their armour, really.”
“Having played for the All Blacks, one of the things we used to talk about 25 years ago was that everyone was a wee bit scared of us.”
“Perhaps that’s not the case anymore; I’m not sure,” Joseph said.
He did however, praise the All Blacks for executing and not allowing Japan to get on the front foot late in the game when they were left with 14 men after Brodie Retallick was sent off with a red card.
“We just made too many mistakes at the wrong time. Everything else around the game in terms of how we wanted to play and what we needed to do is really really good,” Joseph said.
“Our lineout was very good; we created a lot of momentum because we won the ball at the backend of the lineout, we got over the gain-line, and then we were able actually to do some really good moves. On the opposition, we shut their lineout down, shut their maul down, but it still wasn’t enough, and that sort of tells you how good the All Blacks are as a team.”
It was the lowest margin of defeat between the two sides in their five official Tests played against each other.
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