“We wanted to send a message,” says New Zealand coach Ian Foster.

Ian Foster (New Zealand coach, After the All Blacks’ victory over Italy with a score of 96-17 ) : “We wanted to send a message, we felt we had a good couple of weeks and felt we needed to rebuild momentum in this tournament after this break (the All Blacks’ previous match was on September 15 against Namibia, editor’s note). But to play a team (Italy) that we had legitimate concerns about – because they are a good team and had played good rugby up to that point – and to dominate them in that way is really satisfying.

(When injured people came back) we saw the difference that Shannon (Frizel) made in our group. I thought Jordie (Barrett) was solid. I thought Sam (Kane) and Tyrell (Lomax) would come off the bench and be better in those moments. We saw the power return to Tyrell’s legs in the scrum. (In the rest of the tournament) we will continue to build on what we are doing. The important thing for us is that we had to play a game under pressure this evening (…) Some people talk about the teams that have already qualified for the quarter-finals. But there are still things to look forward to that have implications. (In the last group match) Uruguay showed that they are an impressive team, so we have to respect them. But clearly we were where we wanted to be.»

Into the Sky Sports microphone