All Blacks: A dark day in the south

Coaches Steve Hansen, Graham Henry (pictured) and Wayne Smith have work to do before Saturday's second test. Photo / Getty Images

By all logic Te Puke flanker Tanerau Latimer will start this week's second test against France as the All Blacks survey the physical and emotional damage from their season-opener.

Latimer should be a straight swap for Adam Thomson, who will be out of rugby for six weeks after breaking his hand, and experienced hooker Keven Mealamu should suit up because Andrew Hore has damaged his rib cartilage.

As cover for the injured, breakaway George Whitelock and hooker Aled de Malmanche have been summoned from the Juniors tournament to join the national squad for Saturday's test in Wellington.

Halfback Brendon Leonard and flanker Jerome Kaino have recovered from injury and should go straight into the mix, but there is still uncertainty about Ali Williams and Conrad Smith being fit for this game.

Injuries have bitten deep into the All Black resources but that does not excuse or explain their incompetence in their 22-27 loss to start the test season at Carisbrook.

This was a French side with fewer caps (346) than the All Blacks (360), they were without their regular captain and others for this trip, they had misfired in the Six Nations and were at the end of an exhausting club season in unfamiliar surroundings.

But after their victory, experienced tourist Sebastian Chabal said the side had been determined to give everything. Victory would not persuade them to relax. They wanted to emulate their 1994 predecessors, who won both their tests.

"We know we have nothing to lose and when we are in this spirit we play the best."

Meanwhile, the All Blacks face a week of introspection, scrutiny and self-analysis after their pancake performance in Dunedin.

They were so inadequate that they provoked a reworking of a line about the deficiencies of a past English cricket team.

The diagnosis would have concluded: "There were only four things wrong with the All Blacks, they couldn't run, kick, pass or tackle."

Coach Graham Henry collected the post-match hit and did not shy away from the flaws. The catalogue was bulky, from scrum troubles to the wobbly backline alignments, sloppy kicking, tackling and poor decisions.

In mitigation, he mentioned that the All Blacks had struggled with the change from Super 14 to test rugby and the accompanying revised laws the French were familiar with.

"It was a big change to play against a side which put us under huge pressure at scrumtime, drove lots of lineouts and we struggled with the physicality of that."

It was immaterial, Henry said, whether the All Blacks liked the laws. They had to come to grips with them and sort out solutions.

New lock Isaac Ross was "gutted" at his defeat on debut but could be exonerated on the blame sheet. Forwards with far more experience failed their first exam of the year.

"A loss is nothing you'd want to put on your CV for your first All Black test," he said after the match. "But you have got to park that and hold this feeling because you don't want it again - so we've got to take that into the next few games," Ross said.

This year the All Blacks had the luxury of a much longer buildup. They had been in camp in Auckland then Dunedin, they had trained, talked, planned and studied for Saturday, they were facing a steady but not overly threatening French side and flunked the exam.

The lack of snap was as much a coaching as a playing issue. The scrum buckled, Thomson and Co were smoked at the breakdown and those failures permeated through the team.

Henry and his staff last faced a crisis of this magnitude in the middle of their first year, in 2004, when after a close loss to the Wallabies they were clobbered 40-26 by the Springboks.

Richie McCaw and Daniel Carter were injured and missed that defeat but recovered for the unbeaten end-of-year tour. But neither is available for this week in Wellington, a test match which suddenly has extra bite to it after the confusion at Carisbrook.