Rugby: Save the talk for Sunday, All Blacks tell Wales

Rookie All Black Zac Guildford has been amused by all the trash-talk coming out of the Welsh camp this week. Photo / Getty Images

CARDIFF - The All Blacks are clearly tiring of Wales' trash-talking, as the tourists' newest rugby international offered them a humble piece of advice today.

From coach Warren Gatland to young winger Leigh Halfpenny, Wales have talked a great game all week and hinted the aura-less All Blacks are ripe for the picking at Millennium Stadium on Sunday (NZT).

All this has been observed with some amusement by All Blacks debutant Zac Guildford, who will mark his former age-group international foe Halfpenny on the left wing.

"I don't really get that. They do talk it up quite a bit, the Welsh, but I prefer to save our talking for the field which the All Blacks usually do," Guildford said.

"I have a bit of a laugh about it when the opposition talks it up. You can do all the talking you want, but the real talking will happen on Saturday when the teams clash.

"I don't make much of it, it just brushes over me. They can say what they want to say."

Halfpenny, 20, boldly chimed into the debate of the week, about whether the All Blacks retained that air of invincibility.

He said while that aura existed in the past, it had vanished in recent years despite the All Blacks having won the past 20 tests between the sides spread over 56 years.

"I think the time where players were in awe of them has gone and it's definitely about us and not them this year," he told the Western Mail newspaper.

"We are quietly confident that it could be a good time to get a win after 50-plus years. We have moved on as a team."

The clear intention to talk themselves up and chip the All Blacks had slightly irked the tourists' coaches, who refused to buy into it today.

Graham Henry, a former Wales coach, was not biting at the cheerfully delivered question from the floor: "How's your aura?"

"I don't think that's for me to describe, it's for all you other people to do that. All we do is coach to the best of our ability and the guys try to play well," Henry responded.

"The judgment around those mystical things is for other people, not for us."

Assistant coach Steve Hansen, another former Wales coach, noted the Welsh players were "obviously pretty confident", while captain Richie McCaw played the deadest of dead bats to any verbal jousting.

"To be honest I don't read too much into it at all," McCaw said.

"The guys that were here last year remember it as a tough test match, probably the toughest on tour, and we realise it's going to be the same on Saturday. What's said before means absolutely nothing."

- NZPA