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Whitney Hansen: ‘My hope is that you just see those things a little more'
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The Black Ferns head to California to kickstart their new era under head coach Whitney Hansen, with their first matchup of the 2026 campaign against the USA less than seven days away.
It will be the first opportunity to showcase growth under Hansen, who was announced as the new head coach earlier this year, succeeding Alan Bunting.
Hansen named eight new faces in their Pacific Four squad last month, heading into their first campaign of the new cycle.
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Despite not playing in New Zealand currently, the Black Ferns have been able to pick five players from England’s PWR league, which include Ruahei Demant, Liana Mikaele-Tu’u, Maiakawanakaulani Roos, Tanya Kalounivale and Georgia Ponsonby.
The nine newcomers, including injury replacement Sam Taylor for veteran Chelsea Bremner, have their first opportunity in the black jersey against the USA in Sacramento, before Canada in Kansas, and then Australia in the Sunshine Coast to close out the Pacific Four series.
Bremner, who has played 24 Tests for the Black Ferns, was ruled out of the Pacific Four campaign with an injury that was picked up during the team’s last session in New Zealand on Tuesday, before the team flew out to North America.
Speaking to Jason Pine on Newstalk ZB’s Weekend Sport, the daughter of former All Blacks head coach Steve Hansen, believes that a lot of the previous strengths of the Black Ferns will translate across to the new regime.
“I think when you see the Black Ferns play at their best, it won’t necessarily be things that are different when you’ve seen them play at their best, my hope is that you just see those things a little more,” Hansen said on Newstalk ZB.
“You know, we’re a team that thrives when we can create the game to be chaotic and put other teams in that space, we want to be unpredictable, we’re physically dominant.
“We have different athletes than the rest of the world and we want to make sure that we’re clinical. We probably weren’t enough of that in the last World Cup, and that’s something that we’ve been working on a lot particularly sort of around that mental performance space as well.
“We know we’ve got to be relentless in doing those things, because at this level, you can’t afford to just do it for a couple of phases, you need to do it continuously. ”
On the debutants, Hansen is asked about whether there’s a clear moment of when she notices that a player is ready to make the jump to the Test arena, with many of their new faces coming through the Black Ferns XV program.
“I guess you’ve worked with the character, and you’ve seen the rugby, and at some point you need to give that a go to for it to be ready,” the Black Ferns head coach explained.
“So it’ll be different for a lot of our newbies that come away. There is some that will have their debut, and there are some that actually just the benefit of just being away on tour and continuing to grow alongside us will be the next step in their journey.
“So we’ve been really excited with all those girls who are potential debutantes, in terms of the character that they’ve shown and the rugby that they’ve showed us.”
