Gregor Paul: AB's need to recover from Brisbane wash-up

All Blacks captain Richie McCaw is tackled. Photo / Getty Images

Graham Henry's fears that his players could take an unconscious dose of complacency into the All Blacks have all but dissolved.

For the first time in the professional era, the All Blacks will come into a World Cup having not won the Tri Nations. Australia are the side with all the momentum; the team that many observers will pick as the favourites; the team who are maybe coming good at exactly the right time.

Neither Henry nor his players will have enjoyed defeat in Brisbane. Given their record over the last eight years, losing has hardly been a habit. Victory would have been nice. It would have kept the foot on the throat of the Wallabies, netted a Tri Nations and sent another ripple of confidence through the squad.

Nice, but not imperative. Nice but potentially dangerous as if nothing else, in sheer mathematical probability terms, it would surely have increased the likelihood of the All Blacks losing to the Wallabies at the World Cup.

Since 2008 these two teams have played 14 tests. The sequence has gone one win to the Wallabies, 10 to the All Blacks, one to the Wallabies, one to the All Blacks, one to the Wallabies.

Forget the first 11 tests - the Wallabies have taken the better part of three years to mature and improve under Robbie Deans. During that run of 10 defeats, the Australians were in transition - weeding out some established men such as Lote Tuqiri, Matt Giteau and Stirling Mortlock and replacing them with the new guard of Kurtley Beale, Will Genia and Quade Cooper.

A semblance of a pattern is developing now - the last three games have been lose, win, lose for the All Blacks and the optimists will buy into the idea that the next result is destined to be a New Zealand victory..

The earliest these two can meet at the World Cup under any scenario is the semi-final. Victory then would suit the All Blacks just fine given they have not yet managed to defeat the Wallabies at a World Cup.

But they stand little chance if they repeat their first half performance in Brisbane. The All Blacks drifted into the game mentally and were beaten up across the park.

"The first half we lacked a bit of mental edge there," says Dan Carter.

"The Aussies really fired up and were extremely physical. They got stuck into us and we made too many mistakes, fell off too many tackles and couldn't get into the game in that first half.

"That was pretty frustrating. They defended slightly different. Their wingers were coming up and stopping a lot of our players. So it was tough to go wide against them and we felt we weren't able to strike out wide so hence go to a much more direct route."

It was when the All Blacks played tighter to the breakdown with the forwards, lower and more aggressive in the drive that they wrestled back control of the game.

The Wallabies will be a little apprehensive at how vulnerable they looked when the All Blacks stayed narrow for a colossal number of phases and had the patience to not push the ball wider until they had created space.

The All Blacks will be equally apprehensive at their inability to push on and win the game having clawed their way back from 20-3 to 20-all. Apprehensive but not distraught. Now they have some tension back in the squad.

They are under an element of pressure now, with everyone aware they need to raise their game; everyone aware that the margins in test football are so tight, to turn up just one per cent off is fatal.

The All Blacks needed that edge; they needed a bit of adversity coming into the tournament.