All Blacks destroyed Welsh home advantage

Wales captain Gareth Thomas in action for Wales. Warren Little / Getty Images

CARDIFF - Wales captain Gareth Thomas said New Zealand neutralised the "Millennium Stadium factor" to set the platform for their record-breaking 41-3 victory this morning (NZT).

The European champions kicked off on a wave of noise and colour as the majority of the near-75,000 crowd willed them to overcome the All Blacks for the first time in more than half a century.

However, those fans were soon silenced by the clinical play of the Tri-Nations champions who hit the ground running in the first match of their Grand Slam tour before going on to condemn the Welsh to their heaviest-ever Cardiff defeat.

"They've taken a big thing away from us today and that's the Millennium Stadium factor," said Thomas, who also suffered three defeats at the hands of the All Blacks with the British and Irish Lions earlier this year.

"We usually rely on playing a big first 20 minutes to get the crowd going but they took the game to us. We were defending for 20 minutes and that set the pattern today.

All Black coach Graham Henry, well aware of the passion of the Welsh fans, said his team had talked about the special nature of the ground that once rang to the sound of his name when he coached Wales.

"Almost 75,000 fans in that stadium are immense and it was important for us to start well," he said.

Wales coach Mike Ruddock refused to blame defeat on the absence of six Lions players, instead identifying the mistakes that littered his team's play.

"We realised we were up against it but there are no excuses. We were not good enough on the day," he said.

"Whatever team we put out would have got beaten if we didn't get things right. We didn't deliver the performance we wanted to and against the All Blacks you are going to get hurt.

"We need to increase our accuracy in all areas -- particularly lineout, tackle area and our cohesion.

"We're happy with our lineout strategy but not with the way we operated under pressure out there. We have to go away and look at that.

"In the tackle, we didn't win as much ball as we wanted and far too often we gave the ball away. New Zealand won the collisions in the contact area and that put them on the front foot."

Despite Ruddock's claim, the absentees were clearly missed as Wales looked a long, long way from the side that swept to the Six Nations grand slam earlier this year.

That success was part of a run of eight consecutive victories that began after they lost to the All Blacks by a point a year ago.

However, it was clear there would be no similarly close contest after the teams spent the opening 10 minutes camped in the Welsh 22.

Blown away in the lineout, Wales contributed heavily to their own downfall with a stream of handling errors that produced regular turnovers and invariably brought them up short in the few attacking situations they did create.

"We won the last eight and wanted to develop the winning habit," Ruddock said. "We are disappointed with the margin but once you allow New Zealand to get the first one in and you are not accurate with your catch-up they come back to hurt you."

While New Zealand move on to Ireland for the second leg of their Grand Slam tour, Wales will look to rebuild confidence against Fiji before the stiffer tests of South Africa and Australia to come.

- REUTERS