Dane Coles was yellow carded at Twickenham after lashing out with his boot © Getty Images

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Hooker Dane Coles has been warned to expect more baiting from Test opponents and to tone down his aggression before it becomes a weakness in the All Blacks armoury.

Coles was shown a yellow card when he lashed out with his boot during New Zealand's 24-21 win over England at London. The first-choice All Blacks No.2 over-reacted to 56 minutes of needling, coach Steve Hansen said, and was fortunate the colour of the card was yellow and not red.

"If he'd mistakenly got someone in the chops with that boot, he'd be home," Hansen said. "He'll learn a lesson, hopefully, because we can't afford in a tournament like the World Cup to lose a hooker for 4-5 weeks. He knows it was dumb and he'll learn from it."

Former All Blacks prop Craig Dowd wrote a column this week expressing concern that Coles has always had discipline issues and had let his team down at Twickenham. He predicted other teams will now try to get under the 27-year-old's skin.

"All opponents will try to assess the All Blacks' weaknesses, real or imagined," Dowd wrote for ESPN. "And every game they will attempt to get at him. It becomes a personal battle for Coles to try to contain that, and deal with it."

Hansen admits the 25-Test hooker, who is on the reserves bench against Scotland on Saturday, was on the receiving end of some blatant gamesmanship from the English. He expects him to handle it better next time.

"He fell to a sucker punch," Hansen said. "They were poking and prodding him and pulling his jersey." However, Hansen denies there is an endemic discipline problem within the All Blacks, even though they have picked up seven yellow cards this year - more than any other tier one nation.

He believes several of the cards have not been deserved and says there have been only two blatant acts of ill-discipline in the last two years.One was the Coles incident and the other when prop Ben Franks punched a Springboks opponent during last year's thrilling win in Johannesburg.