All Blacks visit Ethos

The New Zealand Rugby Union team, commonly known as the All Blacks across the world, came for a quick visit and training session in Ethos on Monday afternoon. According to Sport Imperial, the team did not wanting to publicise their visit; despite this, the sports centre was swamped with enthusiastic students and their camera phones, as well as journalists from Sky.

An ‘exclusive’ news conference was held in the Cafe after they had finished their training session in the sports hall, where the team were doing run throughs.

The side is returned to Ethos on Thursday afternoon, where the weights section of the gym was reserved for them. According to one source, one of the New Zealand coaches was heard saying on Monday that he was going to ‘beast’ them in the gym.

New Zealand are in the UK for the upcoming Autumn Internationals, with their first game against England at Twickenham on Saturday. The game will also be shown in 3D by Sky. The All Blacks will then play Scotland the following week at Murrayfield, followed by Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, finishing off their tour with a game against Wales on the 27th November.

Last week, Australia broke the All Blacks 15-match winning streak when they beat them 26-24 in Hong Kong to win the Bledisloe Cup. With the game in the 82nd minute, 20-year old James O’Conner scored a try on the touchline for Australia and converted the goal himself to give them the win. Several of the New Zealand players, including Isaia Toeava, have vowed to learn from their mistakes last Saturday and are hoping for an improved performance in their upcoming game against England on Saturday.

This is not the first time that the All Blacks have come to Imperial, with the side training in Ethos this time last year. However, they were clearly able to keep their last visit more private than the one this week.