All Blacks fear a fired up Rocky backlash

The All Blacks are braced for a fired-up Rocky Elsom re-emerging a more dangerous back-rower without the Wallabies captaincy in Saturday night’s Tri-Nations decider.

Deposed as skipper last week, Elsom will play his first Test without the extra responsibilities at Suncorp Stadium, but it’s ensured he’s under extra selection pressure.

While now vulnerable with Scott Higginbotham making a great impact off the bench, New Zealand expect the 68-Test flanker to be back near his menacing best.

Positional rival Adam Thomson feared the All Blacks could pay the price two-fold for a motivated and unshackled Elsom being dumped.

“I guess when you do take away something like the captaincy then he can just focus on his own job,” Thomson said on Thursday.

“He will be pretty pumped up as well and knows that he will have to put a performance in; that the captaincy won’t keep him selected just outright.

“He’ll be into it and it might make him more dangerous and that’s not a good thing for us.”

Wallabies great Tim Horan, four months ago, had been the first to suggest Elsom would do better without the burden of captaincy as he returned from injury.

The 28-year-old naturally hasn’t been at his best this Tri-Nations after overcoming hamstring and ankle problems but he showed he wasn’t far off in the 14-9 win over South Africa in Durban a fortnight ago.

Elsom, though, was not about to agree with Thomson, Horan or coach Robbie Deans when asked whether he’d perform better focusing solely on his own game.

“Maybe,” he said. “You never know how things will work out. You can’t predict everything.”

The former captain also dismissed any notion that he was now under more pressure to keep the No.6 jersey he’s virtually owned since the last World Cup in 2007.

“Every week it is like that and when you lose sight of that, for whatever reason, it’s liable to bite you there,” Elsom said.

“I guess if you are a player in this team or any Super team that’s the way it is every time you go out on the weekend and you need to justify your existence.”

Meantime, suspended backline star James O’Connor has ended his own week-long social media ban by reconfirming he only has himself to blame for missing Saturday night’s Test.

O’Connor had shut up shop on his twitter account following his controversial World Cup announcement no-show last Thursday that cost him his Wallabies place.

“Hey guys, been a crazy week and gutted to be missing game this weekend, no-one’s fault but my own,” he tweeted.

“Will be supporting the boys however I can to help get them over the line.”