‘That’s on me’: Jason Ryan accepts blame for set-piece struggles

Jason Ryan spoke to the media last Sunday at Auckland Airport after a brilliant victory over the Springboks at Eden Park, extending the All Blacks‘ unbeaten record to 51 straight games.

The forwards coach, in standard Ryan fashion, was honest and acknowledged that the Springboks’ scrum late in the second half at Eden Park wasn’t of the All Blacks’ standard.

But in his exact words, he went on to explain that his forward pack will review that moment and make sure it’s a ‘never again moment’.

Well, after Saturday’s record loss at Sky Stadium against the Springboks, Ryan has once again had to accept and take responsibility for his team’s struggles at the set piece.

“Yeah, disappointing, we just basically lost all our momentum, we had a bit of a meltdown, and a couple of decisions under pressure, and just couldn’t get any rhythm, and they got away from us in that second half,” Ryan told Jason Pine on Newstalk ZB’s Weekend Sport radio show.

“We’re going to take a pretty hard look at ourselves, to be honest, we lost a little bit of momentum and timing in our set piece as well, and that’s that’s on me.

“I’ll take responsibility for that, we missed a couple of line-outs at key times where the scrum was so I take full responsibility for my area in the set piece.

“We gotta have a real hard look at ourselves in that part of our game because we pride ourselves on that, and we just weren’t up to par last night.”

When asked about how the performance of his side deteriorated after last week’s win, Ryan explained that in the first half, he thought the All Blacks played some outstanding rugby.

“I thought we played some awesome rugby with the ball in hand, the first 40 was right on, and then halftime, the boys felt fresh, and we just made error after error, and then some.

“When we did win some line-outs, I thought our kicking was not good enough, and we lost the aerial battle, and we pretty much lost everything, to be fair.

“So when we review that deeply, we’ve got to make some adjustments pretty quick because we put a lot into that test match. We thought we had a great week in preparation, and we talked a lot around the week before, earlier in the week, and getting our mental side right.

“It wasn’t so much putting together the same performance as Eden Park, but it was getting this to the same mental performance, and then I just don’t think we were there,” Ryan said.