Sevu Reece of New Zealand scores a try during the Autumn International match between Wales and New Zealand at Principality Stadium. Photo / Getty Images.
Sevu Reece of New Zealand scores a try during the Autumn International match between Wales and New Zealand at Principality Stadium. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
There were portents of doom hanging over the test in Cardiff, mostly driven by fears Wales were vulnerable because they weren't able to access all of their best players.
The fears proved to be entirely founded in the end as Wales were duly torn apart and reduced to asorry rabble, unsure where to go or what to do by the last 20 minutes.
But while the carnage duly arrived as predicted, the source wasn't so much the lack of quality within the Welsh team, but the abundance of it within the All Blacks.
Wales could have had every player in the land available, even played with a few extra and they most likely still would have withered and then sunk without a trace against an All Blacks team that produced a patient, disciplined and impressively controlled effort.
The Welsh will have sat in their changing room after this one and known they were blown off the park by a team that was light years ahead in speed of thought and movement.
What will have possibly surprised Wales the most, is that they were beaten up by the All Blacks, too.
New Zealand ran through the Welsh as much or even more than they ran around them and that's the bit that will have really hurt. Wales knew they were never going to match New Zealand for dash, but they did think they would be all over them in the bash.
But that was why this test was never close, because New Zealand produced a performance that had both steel and silk.
While the final 25 minutes saw the All Blacks run riot, it was the hard work and crunch and crash in the 55 that set all that up.
TJ Perenara of New Zealand reacts during the Autumn International match between Wales and New Zealand at Principality Stadium. Photo / Getty Images.
Wales had to be defused. They had to be beaten up and broken down and New Zealand, not as clinically or as quickly as they would have wanted, still got that job done and they got it done well.
It was a sign of how much they absorbed by losing to South Africa.
The return of Sam Whitelock saw the lineout restored to full function, the scrum was rock solid and the intensity and speed of the pick and drive ball carrying was at a higher level than it has been all year.
There was a realisation that the points had to be taken, the grind relished and piece by piece, Wales would be dismantled.
And so it proved. New Zealand got their reward for being so patient and disciplined and by the final 25 minutes they were running rampant.
Wales had almost nothing left in the tank having been drawn into that war of attrition and they couldn't build their defence, cover the field or cope with the pace that the All Blacks injected with their bench.
How the game panned out is precisely how the All Blacks coaching staff planned it. They wanted to break Wales down and then open them up.
Fight them in the trenches, win that particular battle, and then play wider and faster when the fatigue was setting into the Welsh legs.
When New Zealand are able to marry their physicality with their creativity – be prepared to use one to open the way for the other, they are the most deadly team on the planet.
The rest of the world lives for structure, for the game to flow logically from one organised situation to the next.
But New Zealand are a team that thrives on chaos. They want disorganisation to reign, because when it does, as it did for large periods in Cardiff, they come to life and use their almost insane array of talent to produce rugby that runs on instinct and highly refined skill-sets.
Once the game opened properly, it was a chance to see Beauden Barrett deliver a reminder of his all-round ability on his 100th cap. He was back to somewhere near his best – tidier, sharper, astute in his use of the ball, accurate and composed.
New Zealand perform the haka during the Autumn International match between Wales and New Zealand at Principality Stadium. Photo / Getty Images.
He picked off a couple of intercept tries, but it was the way he saw the whole field that mattered and how he used the ball, how he brought all those around him into the game and so cleverly worked out how to pull Wales apart that mattered more.
By pulling the right tactical strings, the All Blacks were able to give Will Jordan a chance to show he is a young man with an opportunistic streak that enables him to pull off the freakish.
They were able to give Ardie Savea the platform to prove that no other side has a loose forward quite like him.
Who else can in one play be piling through big, big men with that famous leg drive of his and charging down the wing, flipping a perfect no-look pass the next?
This was the tactical blueprint from which the All Blacks will try to work for the remainder of this tour.
They have seen the value of patience, what they can do if they are prepared to slug it out at the coalface and win the war of attrition first.
