All Blacks captain Sam Cane lashes out at pitch invader

I guess he's probably just trying to front foot any criticism he might get. Not always easy to know how it will be perceived.

But yeah, hard to see how he did anything wrong. He tripped a guy who was being a dick.

Same. Just watched the video now, and that's so not worth anything. I thought he had fully bodied him. Seems SANZAAR opened a bit of an investigation and have since concluded that he's done nothing wrong - That might be a procedural thing though where they have to look at every incident such as this?

There's an angle from behind the posts which makes it look like a more aggressive chop than a foot-trip. I think the only reason for the apology was that it turned out to be a teenager and not your normal adult pitch invader.

Which is likely why he apologized. He must know his situation is tenuous.

There's such a meme about Sam Cane; and I really think its far from the truth and more that folks don't understand his role at 7, especially when we have Ardie Savea playing. He's there to tackle opposition to a standstill on defence and on attack to clean out their defenders or tidy up when there's bad ball or the structure has gone.

It'd be handy if he could get over the ball a bit more as well like a traditional jackalling 7, but more often than not when he's in a collision its as the first tackler which means he can't and somebody else should be having a go.

If you look at his performances with an eye to those tasks, he's clearly the best 7 in NZ, more so this year than last as Papali'i has fallen away a bit, but even last year he was doing his role better than most ABs were doing theirs.

Attack - no. But absolutely use anything legal in the sport they are playing to get involved and stop them. Ankle tap isn't legal, but a beautiful tackle should be permitted.