Steve Hansen no bully but All Blacks will raise concerns with Jaco Peyper

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- All Blacks coach Steve Hansen says he won't open a dialogue on the laws of rugby in the media and will instead keep his pre-match conversation with referee Jaco Peyper private ahead of the first Test against the British & Irish Lions.

Two of the big talking points over the last couple of weeks have been the scrum and illegal "blocking", the latter an infringement for whom the Maori All Blacks were penalised in their loss to the Lions in Rotorua. Given Lions coach Warren Gatland raised the issue of "blocking" in the lead-up to that match and then received a penalty for it, the public airing of grievances could be regarded a success.

But Hansen said he would be no "bully" and would instead share a quiet word with Peyper on Friday.

"Well if I talk to you about it then I'm applying pressure to him in the media and that's sort of like bullying him and I don't want to do that," he said. "So I'll just quietly talk to him on Friday when we go down there and certainly there's areas of the game that we'll talk about and they'll be consistent with what everyone talked about in March - the key areas of the game."

While the All Blacks coach may have other areas of concern in the Lions' game plan he's withholding for now, Hansen did eventually elaborate when pressed on the issue of blocking.

Suggesting it occurred every week, Hansen said it was up to both sides to adjust to Peyper's interpretations and argued the Lions had likely been guilty of it themselves, too.

"Rugby games are rugby games, aren't they? And the referee's got the hardest job in the world I reckon," he said. "And there'll be things that happen, and with the blocking the rule says that as long as you don't change your direction of running, you're entitled to run back to help your teammate and that's the key, isn't it? Turn around and run back, and don't change your line. If your line's the same then you're not blocking, what you're doing is just running back to help your teammate.

"But if you run five metres to get in front of someone, that's dopey; that's dumb. And in that case, Gats [Gatland] is quite right. It happens every week, like if you have a look at the Samoan game it happened to us. And I'm sure if you had a look closely at what; if Warren was willing and able to look at his own team closely they probably do it. It's one of those things that happens in the game."

Hansen on Thursday sprung a selection surprise in naming Rieko Ioane on the left wing for Saturday's showdown in Auckland, the speedster joining Ryan Crotty and skipper Kieran Read as one of three changes to the team that thumped Samoa 78-0 last Friday.