Grant Fox: All Blacks not satisfied with form

Daniel Carter brought a robust all-round performance for the All Blacks. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The All Blacks are not satisfied with their World Cup form but hope the "real fear" of a quarterfinal exit will spur them to greater deeds next week in Cardiff.

"If we are brutally honest we are not where we want to be," selector Grant Fox told Newstalk ZB's Tony Veitch. "We are making progress but would have liked to have had a better performance for longer today," he said after the 47-9 win against Tonga.

In each of their victories against Argentina, Namibia, Georgia and Tonga they had produced strong 30 minute patches but nothing longer and that was frustrating.

"Maybe what we need is the real fear because to be blunt, apart from Argentina, the guys obviously were pretty confident we could get the job done against the other sides and we have done it.

"Now there's no tomorrow and maybe that is the real fear we need which we had at Eden Park earlier in the year after we lost in Sydney and maybe we need to bring the real edge we are waiting for, longer into the games."

The All Blacks got their game going in the second half when the bench made an impact but they did not kick the ball enough to avoid Tonga's strong defence.

The skills and error rate were better however they did not deal with the high ball--"it's an area we are not coping with very well," --and Tonga's rush defence which would need plenty of attention before a sudden-death quarterfinal against France or Ireland.

Wing Waisake Naholo had coped well with his recovery from injury and his game duties but it had not been easy while Nehe Milner-Skuder had another strong match.

Daniel Carter brought a robust all-round performance but the All Blacks would need to play more field position in their quarterfinal and bring a better balance to their game.