Ruthless attitude key to clinical All Black display

Richie McCaw and Dan Carter celebrate winning the Bledisloe Cup. Photo / Getty

Get the attitude wrong and it all goes wrong. Get it right and the performance clicks. It's that simple for the All Blacks, reckons All Black coach Steve Hansen.

Attitude is everything. Mindset and focus are what drive the All Blacks into the right places and what cuts teams apart.

The Wallabies were pretty much doomed the instant they poked the bear last week. Bad idea that - if you have to then front against the bear the following week.

And the Wallabies got angry bear and as their coach Michael Cheika said: "We didn't improve from last week, and they did."

As to where the All Blacks improved, that was simple: they chucked out all the fuzzy thoughts in their heads. They gave up trying to reinvent the wheel and play miracle rugby against a rush defence.

"It's a lot easier to play rugby if you are going forward," said Hansen. "Last week we tried to go side-to-side and you have to earn the right to do that.

"You have to go forward first and tonight we changed things up a little but subtly and earned the right to go forward. There was a lot of people pissed off about the performance the week before. I don't mean to be crass but you could tell that all week.

"Tonight before the game you could chop the changing shed up. We have got to be able to capture that without having to lose."

The game looked entirely different to the week before. The All Blacks were faster, more direct, ruthless and clinical when they needed to be.

It looked on the surface as if they had ripped everything up and started again. It looked like they were from Venus last week, Mars this week.

To an extent that's true. But they hadn't ripped anything up as such. They didn't really change anything technically or that much tactically.

What they did was turn up in the right frame of mind and with that- they were able to smash up the middle.

That's the stark nature of test football. Sometimes it just isn't pretty. It can't be pretty. The Wallabies were rushing up in the middle of the field again and the All Blacks couldn't fall into the same trap again if flinging it wide and hoping for the best.

What they had to do was ask Australia to tackle them. That was it. No little passes before the contact. No dancing about on the spot hoping that men in excess of 120kg were going to have the footwork to fool anyone.

It was hard onto the ball and wham and the more the All Blacks did it, the more the Wallabies hated it. And that was the difference right there - the All Blacks could dominate the collisions and recycle the ball quickly.

Aaron Smith had his hands on it earlier and then of course there was Daniel Carter. He was asked to be Daniel Carter of old and he delivered.

The clock was wound back and with him challenging the line, Ma'a Nonu was able to work off short balls and cause carnage.

Direct and ruthless - that was the All Blacks in both mind-set and application.