Dan Carter: ‘Millennium Stadium is best place to play’

If Dan Carter can not play at home in New Zealand there is no place he would rather be than Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, where the All Blacks face Georgia in their third World Cup match on Friday.

“Performance-wise, we need to take a step up”, McCaw said. “They love the contact area, a phase of the game we were not happy with in either of our first two matches. Then I came back to New Zealand and the doctors we use with the All Blacks carried it on there”. “You can’t afford to let that happen”.

“When we were down to 14 men (after the sin-binning of prop Jaco Engels in the second half) we fought really hard”, added Burger, one of a handful of professionals in a team of part-timers. It would make history for Georgia and also be a good handicap for us. “There has been an edge in training this week as we look to put right things that were a little bit off in the opening two matches”. They are so passionate about their rugby.

The upcoming battle will take place on Friday night at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales with kick-off at 8pm local time (11pm Georgia time).

Haig is no romanticist and is aware that the reality of beating Namibia next Wednesday, as they attempt to finish third in Pool C and thus qualify for the next World Cup, far outweighs the dream of taking a shot at the game’s Goliath.

Ahead of Saturday’s high profile clashes between England and Australia and South Africa against Scotland, followers of rugby artistry will follow the New Zealand game to see whether Naholo, 24, is the star to pick up All Black’s torch when the Carters and McCaws have gone.

“A lot of the focus has been about getting our game spot-on, because it needs to go up a level”. “We’ve got to deal with it better than we dealt with it tonight”, Hansen said of the multiple stoppages. “We’ve got a five-day backup after this All Blacks game, and Namibia’s very important for us to achieve our goal of qualifying automatically for 2019″.

Asked if the All Blacks were happy to be flying under the radar in Pool C, McCaw scotched suggestions it would be any advantage by the time the quarterfinals rolled around.

That said he believes the strength in depth that the Georgians have been working on developing is reflected since there is considerable experience among those brought into the side, to the extent that this will be the most capped Georgian side ever to play a Test match.