The All Blacks spent the first 25 minutes barely able to get their hands on the ball and under siege from an innovative Wallabies attack plan that was at times brilliantly executed, but they found a way to weaponise their scrum, clean up their act at the breakdown, neatly exit their territory to force Australia to attack from deep and utilise the raw power of their major ball-carriers.
The All Blacks managed to patch themselves up on the run, as it were, and it represented a big win for the mental strength of the players and their ability to adjust technically and tactically in real time.
And it also represented a major win for the coaching team’s selection choices and strategic tweaks, as the undisputed star of the show was Quinn Tupaea, who took barely 10 minutes to blow away any lingering concerns that an undue risk had been taken by playing him in the unfamiliar position of centre.
He may be more comfortable, or at least more used to having No 12 on his back, but Tupaea made the adjustment to wearing No 13 seamlessly and inspirationally, and of all the midfield combinations tried by head coach Scott Robertson, the one that started in Perth used its 55 minutes together to state its case as the best so far.
Tupaea, whose power running and ability to smash and glide past defenders was a defining feature of Super Rugby Pacific this year, showed he can be equally destructive in the test arena.
The All Blacks cleverly used him as a battering-ram No 12 at times and at others, they hid him out the back, getting the ball to him in a bit of space where he showed, in scoring his second try, that he can be just about unstoppable.
But the combination wasn’t all about Tupaea and his contribution. His presence enabled Jordie Barrett to operate more as a second playmaker and he was more involved in directing play and more effective than he’s been all year.
The other key selection success was Peter Lakai No 8, who was brought in to up the energy and increase the All Blacks’ effectiveness at the tackled ball after the Wallabies loose trio won that duel at Eden Park.
Australia’s Fraser McReight proved to be a turnover menace the All Blacks couldn’t subdue, but Lakai brought strong ball-carrying from the base of the scrum, his hands were soft and accurate and he showed up in all the right places.
On the primary goal of bringing dynamism and thrust, he was a big success and if Simon Parker and Ardie Savea are now the two non-negotiables in the All Blacks back row, the selectors have two young, promising options at No 8 in Lakai and Wallace Sititi to juggle and rotate as they see fit.
But as much as resilience is a quality to be celebrated, the All Blacks still feel like they need to be able to deliver more than a grim determination to hang on to hold a seat at the highest table of world rugby.
For too long in the first half, they were passive and ill-disciplined and even in the second half, they simply held themselves together better than a Wallabies team that had more invention but unravelled due to their own unforced inaccuracies.
The net result is that the All Blacks took a step closer to exiting the curious no-man’s land in which they currently sit, where they are not consistently good enough to engender confidence but not so bad as for all hope to have been abandoned.
But it was only a step closer to the boundary, not a performance laced with such imagination and innovation as to change the underlying opinion that this remains an All Blacks side that are grinding their way through tests rather than one that have reimagined their basic blueprint and are reinventing the way they play.
The concern is that the All Blacks are seemingly having to discover basic qualities that were inherent in their predecessors and are not necessarily doing what the great teams of the past did and constantly refining and advancing their attack plans and building a suite of options on how to blast their opponents off the park.
What’s been missing is a wow factor, a sense that the All Blacks are playing a different, faster, more powerful, better-considered brand of rugby than everyone else.
The win in Perth meant the All Blacks finished with four Rugby Championship wins, an improvement on the three posted last year, but the big picture is unchanged in that they finished behind a Springboks team that are consistently playing better rugby because they are more intelligently, aggressively and creatively redefining themselves.
If anything – despite finishing closer on the table – the gap between the Boks and All Blacks has widened in 2025 in comparison with 2024, and just as plucky back-to-back wins against the Wallabies last year didn’t herald the dawn of a new age for Robertson’s team, nor is there enough reason to be confident the breakthrough is now coming this year on the back of a similar Bledisloe series.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.
