The All Blacks salute the crowd in Hamilton after their big win. Photo / Getty
The All Blacks salute the crowd in Hamilton after their big win. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
There was a time when thumping Argentina was considered mandatory, nothing more than a regulation win and the All Blacks living up to expectation.
But the All Blacks have been so volatile, erratic and unpredictable in the past 12 months that they have lowered expectation to the point wherebeating the Pumas generates a previously unknown sense of satisfaction and with it, temptation to buy a little too hard into this idea they are rejuvenated and mostly fixed.
What happened in Hamilton needs to stay in Hamilton so to speak – and the 53-3 destruction of the Pumas be considered a highly impressive demolition job of a team that can't quite pull up a chair at the top table of the world game and looked emotionally flat and physically tired seven days after making history in Christchurch.
The All Blacks delivered on all their promises of fixing their breakdown approach, maintaining their set-piece dominance, varying their kicking game and keeping their shape and composure for the full 80 minutes.
They confronted what they faced: played smartly, accurately and with a sustained intensity and while there is no question the pressure applied by the All Blacks had a major role in breaking Argentina, the Pumas were as much a self-destructive force and danger to themselves as their opponent.
They had to be broken, but such was their fragility, lack of spark and energy, that they were the veritable house of straw.
And we have seen the All Blacks, even these All Blacks, blow down such flimsy structures before.
Smashing Argentina into a pile of dust and rubble shouldn't be seen as evidence per se, that the All Blacks now have the requisite huff and puff in the system to go about destroying the houses of stone that the likes of Ireland, France, South Africa and England can build.
The performance in Hamilton needs to be carefully evaluated to ensure that the good is recognised but not submitted as evidence of a hard recovery and extrapolated into arguments that overstate exactly where this All Blacks side sits in its development.
The All Blacks salute the crowd in Hamilton after their big win. Photo / Getty
First and foremost, it needs to be appreciated that this season to date has operated to a curious and unique pattern of the All Blacks playing consecutive games – be it or two or three – against the same opponent, and they haven't been able to deliver back-to-back victories against any of the three countries they have faced.
What we got in Hamilton was yet more evidence that the All Blacks have a resourcefulness to adapt strategically and technically – absorbing what they learned one week in defeat to be able to successfully reinvent themselves the next to produce a win.
But this isn't quite the source of celebration many think it is, as it is a bust-boom cycle and if it continues, the All Blacks will turn up in Melbourne 11 days from now to be bamboozled by a Wallaby side, only to work them out and smack them about in the return fixture at Eden Park a week later.
It's not sustainable for the All Blacks to be so easily surprised and flummoxed by opponents the first time they encounter them, and beating the Pumas in the second of two tests in Hamilton doesn't of itself provide the basis to be confident that Ian Foster's team will have all the answers they need to beat an Australian side whose ruck and run style differs entirely from anything faced so far this year.
However, what does create something more concrete on which hope can be built is the continued development and progress of the All Blacks pack, which produced its most cohesive and dominant performance of the year in Hamilton.
Test rugby, no matter how much the rules are twisted and tweaked, has never been able to evolve to the point of rendering untrue the maxim about games being won and lost in the set piece and collisions.
The one consistent in the All Blacks' last three tests has been their ability to deliver physical crunch and if this part of their game is indeed now reliable, then the foundation is there to be confident that the attack game will at least be given the requisite front-foot opportunity to develop.
Rieko Ioane looked a million dollars in Hamilton, but he and his fellow backs knew the defensive shape Argentina would bring.
Richie Mo'unga, David Havili and Jordie Barrett all kicked cleverly and mostly accurately, but it took them a dud effort in Christchurch the week before to get to that point.
What we need to see for the remainder of the year is the All Blacks deliver a smart, innovative and flexible attack game without first having had to bungle their way through a defeat to get there.
When the wins start to become consecutive, and the All Blacks consistently turn up with the right game plan – and the ability to adapt it in real time – then we can start talking about rejuvenation, recovery and resets.
