KEY POINTS:
Shunted to his favoured fullback position in his 50th test, Mils Muliaina did not see an appealing All Black picture unfolding in front of him.
As he had done on just four other occasions in coach Graham Henry's 41-test tenure, Muliaina felt the helplessness of defeat.
"There were
lots of restarts, it was a stop-start game, at the breakdown we were not as efficient in the cleanout," he observed.
"We turned over ball and got penalised for being isolated in their 22 and that is the money area really.
"If you don't capitalise on that they end up down the other end and [they] scored with 10 or so minutes to go and that hurt to be honest."
Muliaina's instincts were borne out by statistics which showed the All Blacks faded in the second half as they dealt with the sinbin loss of prop Carl Hayman, while the Wallabies turned up their tempo.
In that half the All Blacks missed 17 tackles to their rivals' 13, they made more handling errors and were beaten 12-10 in the turnovers.
The fullback was mystified when Hayman was dismissed temporarily, and the side felt the "massive blow".
The All Blacks had started soundly, got a lead but then let the test slide.
"We let a lot of opportunities slip by and you just can't do that against the Aussies. You have got to put them away early and just keep putting the pressure on them," Muliaina said.
In hindsight, the side probably tried to play too much rugby in their own half, especially with the wet ball and slippery conditions at the MCG.
"We backed ourselves a little bit there, we thought there were a lot of opportunities and we probably didn't get the talk in enough to bang the ball down there ...
"[After looking at the tapes] we will probably say we needed to kick the ball down there and play some field position and try and put some pressure on.
"They ended up coming back, they had to play all the rugby and they did."
Muliaina preferred to think the midfield troubles were unfortunate rather than incurable.
"It is probably a big ask for someone like Luke [McAlister] to be put in there and so late in the week.
"I think he did pretty well considering Thursday he was shoved in there and hadn't played there apart from the Canadian test."
But the classy fullback acknowledged those sort of dramas were problems they could encounter in the World Cup.
