Jerome Kaino, the man who charged into Conor Murray during the first Test, has said while he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, the reaction to his challenge has been so severe that he’ll be more cautious in this weekend’s second Test.
While the rest of the team, and the country, were all watching Team New Zealand win the America’s Cup on Tuesday morning Kaino said he had been so busy scrolling through his Twitter feed that he didn’t get a chance to look up. “I’ve seen it reviewing the game,” he said, “and it has popped up on my Twitter feed about a million times, so it is a bit hard to avoid it”.
Kaino explained that he “didn’t go in to tackle” Murray, but was trying to tap his swinging leg as he made the kick, only “my timing was off, and I rolled into his planted foot, and that’s what I believed happened.”
He pointed out that he hadn’t been cited, and added, somewhat unsurprisingly given that rugby players aren’t in the habit of calling fouls on themselves, that he didn’t think he should have been. “It is never our intent to go out and intentionally injure someone outside the laws. We play hard and we play fair. That incident was a one-off. It is never our intention to go out and try and single anyone out.
“But what has been said out there about malice and intention to hurt someone, that is never the case. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone, and to play outside the rules.”
Like Steve Hansen, Kaino was unhappy with the suggestion that he had been trying to injure Murray. “I think what is at question here is my intent and what kind of player I was, and all I can say is that I never go into a game thinking that I am going to target someone and intentionally hurt them. I just wanted to clear that up.”
The coaches hadn’t told the team to target Murray, Kaino said. It was just that “we know their strengths and we see ways where we can pressure them. Not only him. They have so many strengths in their team, and we try to come up with ways where we can nullify them, but it’s all within the rules and the laws.”
Murray’s kicking game, he said, “is obviously a strength of the Lions. We need to make sure we are on the right side of the law when we do things, and I thought I was there.”
