Disappointment on the faces of the All Blacks, from left, Aaron Smith, Angus Ta'avao, Dane Coles, Dalton Papali'i, Sam Whitelock and Matt Todd after their drawn test. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
Disappointment on the faces of the All Blacks, from left, Aaron Smith, Angus Ta'avao, Dane Coles, Dalton Papali'i, Sam Whitelock and Matt Todd after their drawn test. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
It never takes much to correct a stuttering All Blacks team and this week, it will be just one simple factor that should act as a magic wand and deliver the urgency and accuracy that wasn't on view in Wellington.
That ingredient is a sense of occasion and the certaintythat the first Bledisloe Cup test in Perth matters.
Whether All Blacks coach Steve Hansen was right to publicly downgrade the opening two Rugby Championship games to warm-up status – intelligence-gathering exercises where outcome was deemed less important than performance – is moot.
He did and the performances duly reflected that the mental intensity was down on where it needed to be and as a consequence of that and the need to come to grips with changed attack patterns, the All Blacks' basic skill execution was poor.
Hands were hard, players were static and the whole business looked laboured and forced for much of the game and inevitably there is now divided opinion whether the All Backs are losing the plot or are in the process of a clever rebuild.
The answer to that will become clearer on Saturday night when the All Blacks should turn up in an entirely different state of mind to the one they adopted in Wellington.
New Zealand's Beauden Barrett. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
The sense of occasion will be in their face. Western Australia's state government has created a magnificent stadium in a city that remains fiercely passionate about the game and loyal to the Wallabies despite Rugby Australia's clumsy and in the end toxic handling of the decision to axe the Western Force from Super Rugby.
Not that the All Blacks need a state-of-the-art stadium rammed with 60,000 orange-shirt-wearing Australians to reach the required levels of mental arousal for a Bledisloe Cup test.
Being in Australia is enough in itself to drive into the All Blacks that this week is one where outcome is most definitely higher on the priority list than performance.
Seeing the Bledisloe Cup promotional flags line the major highways into Perth would have seen a few All Blacks shift their bums to the front of their seats as they arrived.
Hearing Dane Haylett-Petty reveal that former All Blacks skills coach Mick Byrne, who now does the same job with the Wallabies, picked the Richie Mo'unga-Beauden Barrett dual play-making switch two years ago, would have been another little factor to intensify feelings.
The All Blacks, not that they didn't know it before they arrived in Perth, must realise they are very much behind enemy lines as it were and that the phoney war of last weekend created not just by the self-imposed fact-finding theme but also because they were playing a side they will encounter first up at the World Cup, is over.
That much could already be deduced in the body language and words of Ben Smith and Dane Coles, who spoke to the assembled media on Monday.
Not that either elaborated but it was clear in as much as what they didn't say as what they did, that there will be zero tolerance of a similarly prolonged period of poor skill execution.
Matt Todd of the All Blacks charges forward during the 2019 Rugby Championship Test Match between New Zealand and South Africa. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
They know they are here to do business, to take home a trophy of which they are fiercely protective.
If it seems a little unlikely that the All Blacks can simply flick a switch as it were and magically come right this weekend then think back to the last World Cup and how they did just that in the knock-out rounds.
They came into their quarter-final with a deepening public and media ire gathering after disjointed pool games against Namibia and Georgia and only a second-half performance of note against Tonga.
While panic gripped outside the camp, inside it there was an increasing calm and confidence that everything was tracking as it should and that all that was missing was the sense of occasion.
With the greatest respect to those three teams, the All Blacks knew they could make mistakes and get away with them.
They knew they were going to win and what the All Blacks needed was for the safety net to be pulled and the realisation that it was win or go home to infiltrate the players' minds and sharpen everything in their repertoire.
That happened in the quarter-final when they exploded into life and played with an accuracy, urgency and intensity that blew the French away.
It's not that the All Blacks can't perform without that sense of occasion, but there is no question they play better when the stakes are higher and there is no ambiguity about what the consequences of losing will be.
