Gregor Paul: The great decline - All Blacks' least convincing year in a decade

Sam Cane during the 2019 Bledisloe Cup test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Qantas Wallabies. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

The second Bledisloe test should provide a definitive answer as to whether this All Blacks side has what it takes to win the World Cup.

The essence of a World Cup campaign is the ability to respond to pressure and the All Blacks are quite clearly under considerable amounts of that this week.

It's not just that the Bledisloe Cup is under threat following the Wallabies' record win. That's at the heart of it obviously, but the plot is much thicker than that.

The last 10 months have been the most difficult and least convincing of the past decade.

There has been a tangible decline in standards – the All Blacks have won seven, lost three and drawn one of their last 11 tests, but take out the Sunday-picnic fixtures against Japan and Italy and their win ratio is barely above 50 per cent since September 2018.

But there has also been an intangible decline, an ever increasing sense of this team having lost its way in some difficult-to-detect manner.

It has been an age since they cranked the handle and decimated an old foe. It feels like Beauden Barrett's four-try heroics in the second Bledisloe Cup test happened in a different lifetime rather than August last year and one more lacklustre performance, or another defeat, will tip the balance from the All Blacks being a team rebuilding their attack to the All Blacks being a team with a broken attack.

Reece Hodge of the Wallabies celebrates his try during the 2019 Rugby Championship Test Match between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

The onus to fix things sits with everyone involved, but it starts with the forwards, who, looking back through the last 10 tests, won't find much to satisfy themselves they produced what they intended.

The All Blacks pack was beaten up in Perth just as it was the week before, for most of the game at least, by the Springboks and it has become such a recurring theme in recent tests that it is difficult to simply assume that standards will lift at Eden Park as they so often do.

In November last year the pack struggled against Ireland and while the All Blacks beat England in London, the victory didn't come on the back of a dominant performance from the forwards.

And nor was there any sense of rage and control about the forwards in the back half of the Rugby Championship last year and the pack has delivered just the one commanding performance in their last eight tests which was in Yokohama against the Wallabies.

Samu Kerevi of the Wallabies runs the ball during the 2019 Rugby Championship Test Match between the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

The debate in recent weeks about the value of having Richie Mo'unga at first-five and Beauden Barrett at fullback has been utterly pointless for the simple reason that the All Blacks have failed to build any foundation on which this partnership could flourish.

Rugby is an evolving sport but it's still true that the team which dominates the collisions and looks after the ball has the better chance of winning.

Sam Cane and Dane Coles revealed on Monday that a lack of desire was the problem in Perth; that collectively the team, and presumably more specifically the forwards, weren't in the right mind-set.

To turn up once to a Bledisloe test with the wrong attitude is unfortunate but do it twice would be unforgivable and if the All Blacks can't find the urgency and intensity at Eden Park, then you would have to worry about their ability to find it at the World Cup.

The same would apply to the individuals who are now under specific scrutiny this weekend.

Joe Moody and Owen Franks haven't done enough either at the set-piece or away from it and have looked like a couple of honest plodders in comparison with their Australian, South Africa, English and Irish front-row peers.

All Blacks coach Steve Hansen. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Both of the All Blacks' starting props can play with the ball and get around the field and the fact they haven't done that in recent weeks is illustrative of the bigger issue at play here, which is that too many individuals have been getting by in recent tests rather than driving their performance to new levels.

That would be the case with Ben Smith, who may still be struggling for sharpness after damaging his hamstring in Super Rugby, and Rieko Ioane, who was better in Perth than he was in Wellington but still not the dynamic, explosive force he was in 2017.

Rarely in the past few years has there been this much pressure on the All Blacks to impose themselves and adjust their trajectory to provide a basis in fact rather than faith that they remain genuine World Cup contenders.