Rugby: All Blacks coach Steve Hansen playing with advantage

Steve Hansen. Photo / Getty Images.

If 2016 was the year in which the All Blacks re-established themselves, this year they say is all about taking advantage of the opportunities a tough schedule has presented.

What that means is they want to find out if they are good enough to beat the Lions, then lift their performance again for the Rugby Championship and finish with gas in the tank on the end-of-year tour.

Last year, they played some astonishingly good rugby in the middle of the year, but lost to Ireland in November and then crawled their way to the end of the season.

There was no sense of them having found another gear going down the last stretch and that's one of the most pressing things they want to achieve in 2017.

"This year is a little bit of continuation of that re-establishment but it is more about taking advantage of the opportunities that are put in front of us," says All Blacks coach Steve Hansen.

"We have got a great challenge with the Lions coming and four into one makes a pretty good side. It is probably the best team they have picked for yonks, so the challenge is ... are we good enough to get over that hurdle?

"By the end of the series, we will have a real understanding of whether we have been able to take the opportunity or not. And then for the remaining part of the year, if we are successful, can we kick on again in the Rugby Championship or if we are not, then how do we cope with that?

"They are good opportunities because one is a positive story and one is negative, but either way, we are going to have to get better, and looking forward to the Rugby World Cup 2019, these are good opportunities for us to learn and grow."

But it all starts with the Lions tour and the next six weeks or so are where Hansen and his coaching team are focused. The veteran coach will relish the tour from start to finish and while he has the utmost respect for the quality personnel the visitors are bringing, he also knows the All Blacks have a couple of key, inherent advantages.

The All Blacks have an established system, knowledge and networks to fall back on. They will come into camp on June 11 and mostly everyone will know what to do and what is expected of them.

But the Lions don't have that luxury. They will arrive in New Zealand on Wednesday and have to work out everything - their defensive and attacking patterns, their behavioural expectations and their communication systems - from scratch.

Their players will have no history of playing together and the beauty for the All Blacks is that they can sit back and watch the tour unfold - analyse the Lions at their leisure and build up a reasonably detailed picture of what might be coming their way by the first test.

What Hansen has also come to accept is that whatever happens in the first test has no bearing on what will happen in the second. It sounds obvious but it was a key realisation the All Blacks made on their way to winning the 2015 World Cup.

"Being able to back up a really high performance with another really high performance is still the unsolved puzzle for anybody in any sport," says Hansen.

"They never look the same. There is the mental subconscious thing that you think it is going to happen again. You have to understand that even if it is the same team, there is going to be a new wave, they are going to come differently.

"That is what we learned at the World Cup in 2015. We had a great pool stage to get ready for the quarter-final and played magnificently well against France.

"The next week, we were playing against South Africa and it was going to be totally different. It was going to look different and feel different and once we realised that, it was easier to prepare for.

"That's what we have to do here. We have to understand that the first game will feel different to the second and the second will feel different to the third. History tells us we are slow starters in June and hence why we have put the Samoan game in there to get some mileage in the team.

"The guys don't really need the rugby because they have had plenty with their franchises but we do need it as a team to get some cohesion and understanding of what we do and that game is going to be important to us."

The question in the context of the Lions series is how much variation can the visitors bring from one test to the next?

But what about the Lions? If they play one way in the first test, can they change things for the second?

"I don't think any team has the ability to radically change their tactics that much. Maybe the best sides do, but a team like the Lions, which is just coming together, doesn't have enough time to radically change. So what are they going to play? A big forward game and bash up the middle and then use the ball? Or are they going to use the ball right from the word go?

"But to prepare for the first test, they are going to have to show us which one because they can't play like that and change. We will assume some things, believe nothing and then confirm it once we are out on the park.

"But it is probably easier for us to change because we have played together for a long time. As the season goes on, it gets easier to change what you are trying to do, as the Lions could if they were playing more than three tests. The pre-matches are going to be vital for us to get a heads-up on what they are trying to do."

The final advantage the All Blacks may possibly have - Hansen hopes they have - is a proven ability to handle pressure. He's a huge believer in the impact pressure can have and how it can affect performance.

He has been in the international game 16 years and he knows it's not his imagination that good players can suddenly make horrible mistakes simply because they can't deal with the enormity of the occasion.

His side may be relatively inexperienced compared with the 2015 All Blacks who won the World Cup, but he has every confidence in the likes of Kieran Read, Sam Cane, Beauden Barrett and Ben Smith to make the right decisions.

"By and large, most of the leadership group who are your steering wheel for the other guys have been through a World Cup and high pressure situations. I am extremely confident that we will cope with all the expectations that come with being an All Black in 2017 and all the media fuss.

"It will be bigger than any June series we have ever had and the fact that it is a tour has got the whole country excited. Mentally, we are in good shape to cope with that. We have put a lot of work into it over a long time."