Deans expects Aussies to perform
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:39
Australian coach Robbie Deans says he expects nothing but the best from his players during their upcoming tour of the Northern Hemisphere.
Deans will lead his first campaign to Europe as Wallabies coach and says he is keen to take a far more determined approach to the year ending tour that some of those who have gone before him might have done.
The European trip has frequently been used as an experimental tour for some countries from the Southern Hemisphere but Deans is clearly more keen on securing the right results.
New Zealand in Hong Kong will provide the first tough fixture for Deans and his men before their travels see them visit Italy, England, France and Wales before returning home to enjoy some sort of break.
"We're conscious of the history [but] I'm confident that this group will present themselves well in terms of their enthusiasm and that'll be the first requirement," Deans said.
"I wasn't present obviously in the past but I suspect a contributing factor may have been the enthusiasm levels at the far end of the year."
"I don't think that'll be an issue with this group, we've been working hard over the last two weeks and we've got another week to come before we assemble and the indications are that they're pretty excited about this tour."
The former Crusader boss says he has been very pleased with the work put in by his players during their recent two week training camp together but is adamant that they still have plenty of potential left in the bag.
"Hopefully we're still going up and I'd be very surprised if the group's comfortable," he said."
"They have an opportunity to represent their country well and give a good indication that they want to get the opportunity to do that again in the future.
"We've done a lot of work around some of our collective understandings in terms of defence, in terms of work rate and in terms of (our) reaction from attack to defence and defence to attack."
"Those were three pretty important areas for us, I think they're evident in training and we're not done yet."
"We'll just keep chipping away and hopefully we'll embed some habits that will be evident come the hour - I'll let you be the judge of that."
