All Blacks: Revenge sweet so bring on next test

Corey Flynn and Kieran Read celebrate a try by Tony Woodcock. Photo / Janna Dixon

The All Blacks had been waiting 12 months for this match. They had been hurting. A 3-0 scoreline can do that to a proud team.

They might have won nine from nine tests since losing all three to the Springboks last year but it didn't atone for what happened. It didn't come close. They wanted revenge. They got it last night.

"The key thing about what was behind this performance was three-zip last year," All Blacks assistant coach Steve Hansen said.

"A lot of people have been waiting to play this test match. A lot of work went into it. A lot of mental thought went into it from the players. We have come out on top of it. But we have to do it again next week and that's the exciting thing.

"We don't have to wait 12 months. We only have to wait seven days to see if we can repeat it. They are called test matches because they are a test of your character."

What the All Blacks need to do now, however, is see if they can replicate the sort of performance that they produced at Eden Park when the two sides meet again in Wellington on Saturday.

It was also the sort of rugby they will need to reproduce in 15 months at the World Cup.

The All Blacks often talk about consistency of performance and it will be a "challenge", as rugby players like to say, to play every week the way they did last night.

The Springboks have also promised to provide much stiffer opposition.

They weren't at a level expected of the No 1 team in world rugby in everyone's eyes but the IRB rankings.

Their tactical kicking was poor, they slipped off tackles, they lost three of their own lineouts and their much-vaunted scrum often buckled under pressure.

"There was nothing going on from our side tonight," was skipper John Smit's frank assessment. "We didn't give them much of a contest. The lights were out. Our minds weren't in the right place.

"We can look at the game 1000 times and review what went wrong but there were many things missing tonight.

"The All Blacks were really good tonight. They all played well with pace all over the field. They were better than us. But we can only focus on the positives and we can't get any worse. We now have a week to fix that."

Coach Graham Henry didn't want to look that far ahead. He was enjoying the moment, so much so he used the word "special" nearly a dozen times in as many sentences.

"I think it was pretty special," he started off. "It's a special day for this team and for All Black rugby ... It was a special day and every guy played well."