View photosKEY POINTS:
There was a critical admission followed by a stark warning from All Black coach Graham Henry last night, proving his capacity to surprise is as sharp as ever.
He revealed that Canada were a far better side than he thought and he was so taken by their defensive
pattern, he reckoned there could be something to learn from it.
The warning was about the Wallabies, whom he feels will be revelling in their underdog status.
Sure, South Africa will be a massive challenge. They have players in form and their confidence is high, making the nation think the Boks are the biggest threat.
The danger of focusing too hard on the Boks, though, is that everyone could forget that the Wallabies remain a potent threat. Despite their woes, they have the players. George Gregan is not as spent as his coach thinks and Stephen Larkham has plenty of good football in him.
As Henry said: "The Tri Nations are always tough test matches. The record of this management group in South Africa is not great. We have played four tests and have won one. We know what we are up against.
"I think Australia will be strong, too. We have been complacent about how they have been recently. They will love not being in the limelight right now and they will come through strongly."
The task in the Republic will be made harder by the travel and tight turnaround and Henry offered that as a factor behind some of the inaccuracies against Canada.
With all due respect to the Canadians, the serious stuff starts now and for some All Blacks, their key objective was to get through last night's 80 minutes in one piece.
"Perhaps half our guys had their mind on the plane," said Henry. "We are leaving at 7am and it is hard to not think that we are off to South Africa early tomorrow so that may have created a wee bit less focus than normal.
"But 64-13 is a reasonable score and we are probably seven out of 10.
"We have got to be smart when we get to South Africa. We just can't train too much. We have to recover so we will train Wednesday and have a light training on Thursday and make sure we're right for the game. It will be a major challenge which we're looking forward to. We've just got to do it right when we get there and there are no excuses."
Indeed. The All Blacks have reached that phase in their World Cup campaign where the margin of error has been removed. The experimentation is over. There is no bigger picture to look at.
They are, for the first time since 2004, living in the now and we are about to learn whether they can handle life in the present.
