Hansen accuses rugby players of diving to manufacture stoppages after Wallabies-Boks thriller

Steve Hansen has launched a sharp attack on what he sees as a rising trend of players deliberately going to ground to slow matches or trigger TMO reviews, speaking out after Australia edged South Africa 42-38 in Perth on Sunday.

The 2015 Rugby World Cup-winning coach made the remarks on the Rugby Unity podcast, drawing a direct comparison with football and warning that the practice is eroding rugby’s core values. Hansen was unambiguous about where he stands.

“We’ve got divers now in our game. It used to be only in football. Now we got divers,” Hansen said. “And then if that doesn’t get a result, they’ll get someone else to go down so the TMO can go back and look at the diver.”

The 67-year-old extended his criticism beyond the men’s game, pointing to South Africa’s women’s side as an example of a team using injury stoppages to disrupt the flow of play — specifically citing their match against the Black Ferns. “They slowed the game right down with injuries every two seconds,” he said.

Hansen’s comments arrive in the context of a broader debate that ran throughout Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series between the Wallabies and Springboks, with South Africa repeatedly accused of time-wasting tactics. All Blacks scrum-half Cam Roigard was also at the centre of a high-profile diving incident during the series, illustrating that the problem is not confined to one team or nation.

For Hansen, the issue ultimately comes down to what kind of sport rugby wants to be. “You know, so you’re talking about integrity. Is that the game we want? No, it’s not the game I want and I’m sure it’s not the game that a lot of people want,” he said.

The Wallabies’ win in Perth, in which they held off a determined late Springbok fightback, was the immediate backdrop to Hansen’s remarks — though his concern is clearly aimed at a pattern he believes is spreading across Test rugby as a whole.