All Black prop Angus Ta’avao has weighed in on the current state of the All Blacks after two losses to the Springboks in South Africa.

The 34-year-old, currently in the middle of the NPC campaign with Auckland, expressed optimism despite the final result. The All Blacks were in the contest in both games and had their chances to win both, despite falling away in the final quarter twice.

Although public expectations remain high for the All Blacks after being “spoiled” for over a decade, there was a lot to like about the performances in South Africa.

“I’m a bit more optimistic than you two, yes, and I know the public the expectation of this team, Jeff and you’re looking at me, you’re thinking, hold on, hold on, hold on,” Ta’avao explained on Sky Sport NZ’s The Breakdown. 

“But you know, you talk about those margins, and I know the people out there, they’ve got these high expectations of this team to win these games, and we’ve won them in the past.

“We’ll address the last 20 minutes [of the game], but there’s still a lot of good stuff that I’m seeing.”

The All Blacks forward pack performed well at set-piece, holding their own at the scrum, executing well at the lineout, and fixing their maul defence in the second Test.

Ta’avao shared his own expectations for the All Blacks, admitting he didn’t expect things to click so soon after such a long period of continuity.

“You talked about the current reign and you look at the last regime, it was Graham Henry and Steve Hansen under him, Ian Foster under him,” he said.

“That’s a lot of the same over a ten plus year period, from 2011 to 2019, probably the greatest decade of international rugby from the All Blacks, so we’ve been spoiled with greatness with excellence.

“And we’ve probably come into the last phase of, you know, four years, where we haven’t won these games.

“We’ve lost to Argentina for the first time, we’ve lost to Ireland for the first time. Razor comes in and he changes things. 

“There’s a lot of change in this environment. So I don’t expect… I didn’t expect this to happen straight away, and like you said, it’s not easy, because we’ve been spoiled with this greatness over this long, long tenure.”