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EDINBURGH - New Zealand coach Graham Henry shrugged off the high error count that took the gloss off the All Blacks' 40-0 demolition of Scotland this morning, insisting his side had been given their toughest World Cup test yet and come through it in good shape.
"We're pretty happy," Henry said. "We had a really big week on the set piece and we came through well.
"I think we scrummed the best we have in the tournament. Defensively we were good and offensively we scored six tries, although we blew a few through errors so that was a little disappointing."
The match statistics showed a near full-strength All Blacks team had made 20 handling errors against what was a second-string Scottish XV.
"It is a little bit frurstrating and we will address that, but I don't think it is a major concern. You have got to give the Scots a bit of credit.
"They competed very well and we have not had that this far in the tournament, so that was good for us.
"It was highly contested in the tackle area, a very physical game, the most physical we have had and that will be a valuable lesson for us."
Henry also voiced relief that, with one Pool C match against Romania to come, New Zealand have so far managed to avoid any serious injury setbacks.
Leon Macdonald limped off midway through the first half but Henry said he expected the full-back to recover from a bruised thigh muscle after a few days rest.
Scotland coach Frank Hadden insisted he had no regrets over his decision to field a weakened line-up.
Hadden had left out most of his first-choice players to ensure they were as fresh as possible for their final Pool C match against Italy, which will decide which of the two Six Nations sides joins the All Blacks in the last eight.
"It was a gutsy performance overall," Hadden said. "We will be judged not on our performance today of course but whether we reach the quarter-finals.
"We have a huge advantage now. Instead of taking four or five days to recover we can train tomorrow. And that will give us five days proper quality build-up to the match that will decide how well we do in this competition."
Hadden replaced Chris Paterson with Dan Parks after just 20 minutes but revealed afterwards that the first-five had not been seriously injured.
"Chris got a poke in the eye. If it had been blood he would have had 15 minutes out and been OK. But as it was it was just too risky to have your stand off with blurred vision in one eye.
"There did not seem to be anything too serious injury-wise. We will move on. We can't spend more than a couple of minutes dwelling on what happened. Let's move on. We have a tremendous opportunity to do something special for the Scottish crowd in this competition."
- AFP
