New Zealand coach Graham Henry expects strong Scottish challenge
New Zealand coach Graham Henry is expecting a tough challenge as he prepares his All Blacks to take on Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday 13 November.
Scotland has impressed in their recent games, which have led to a four-match unbeaten run. Scotland drew with England in the Six Nations and followed this up with a win against Ireland in Dublin to deny the Irish team a Triple Crown.
Since then, Scotland has impressed with back-to-back wins over Argentina on their summer tour. They sealed a 0-2 series win with a 9-13 victory over Argentina in their last Test.
New Zealand coach, Graham Henry has picked a strong starting 15 as a result of Scotland’s improvement over the season.
"We respect what Scotland are doing in the game and we respect them as a team," said Henry during a press conference.
New Zealand beat Scotland 6-32 in a convincing display in 2008 with a string of fringe players, but the New Zealand coach believes Scotland has improved greatly under coach Andy Robinson.
Henry said, "Andy's doing a great job there. They're a pretty good all-round side. They've played very well in recent times, seem to have a lot of self-belief, they're playing a good style of footy."
New Zealand beat England 16-26 at Twickenham last weekend and Henry is hoping for his team to build on the victory.
"The plan for the tour is to try and improve as a rugby team. We haven't quite done that yet. We've made a lot of changes in the game we play and that takes a bit of a while to develop as a team if you've got a huge number of changes each week,” said Henry.
As a result of these alterations in style and the Scottish team's good form, the All Blacks coach has not made many changes to the starting 15.
"To fulfil the objective we've kept the changes to a minimum," Henry added.
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