New Zealand players watches a traditional dancer perform at the start of the Rugby Championship match between South Africa and New Zealand at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria. Photo / AP
New Zealand players watches a traditional dancer perform at the start of the Rugby Championship match between South Africa and New Zealand at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria. Photo / AP
Sometimes character is displayed with such depth that it can be used to forgive all manner of failings.
The All Blacks' 32-30 win in Pretoria will be one of those occasions. Their ability to dig themselves out of what turned out to be a worryingly large hole was incredible. Theirresilience was inspiring, much like their courage.
A team that hasn't been exposed to the volume of adversity it would like has now proven that when it encounters such a foe, it has the means to overcome.
In a long-list of modern day All Blacks' comebacks this one sits somewhere near the top.
It can't topple the injury-time heroics conjured in Dublin 2013 and wasn't quite as dramatic as the two tries in four minutes to haul the game out of the Soweto fire in 2010, but it was comparable in that the All Blacks showed the same refusal to be beaten.
And that was essentially what defined this test: a refusal by the All Blacks to surrender to either their own frailties or a rampant Boks' side. They eliminated fom their thinking defeat being a valid option.
For 65 minutes the All Blacks were barely clinging to this test. They were on the rock face but they had no convincing purchase.
An obvious sense of nervousness was blighting both their decision-making and execution, while South Africa had hit that magical place where everything they did came off and everything that came off lifted them to a higher level.
Dejected South Africa's players look on at the end of the Rugby Championship match between South Africa and New Zealand at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria. Photo / AP
They were in a virtuous circle, the All Blacks a vicious one and rarely in the last few years has New Zealand's national side put together a more error-ridden, passive, prolonged period of rugby.
But the time to look at that is not in the next few days. The time to worry about why they failed to get their game going and why they were stuck in reverse can wait.
The immediate task is to bask a little in the glory of their bravery and cool-headedness in those final 15 minutes.
They managed to do in South Africa what they couldn't do in New Zealand three weeks ago and that fact in itself illustrates their ability to be stronger and better each time they play.
At 30-18 down and with no discernable sense they had much if any momentum, the All Blacks needed something or someone to instill belief, purpose, focus and yet also calm.
It would have been all too easy for panic to have set in and for the All Blacks to shatter into individualistic cameos as they did when put in a similar position in Wellington.
Not this time, though and if captain Kieran Read was lightly fingered in the Wellington defeat for not imposing himself in the last five minutes, then he should be so again for his role in Pretoria.
He must be credited for holding his team together, galvanizing them in those last 10 minutes and ensuring every man knew his task.
New Zealand's players celebrate at the end the Rugby Championship match between South Africa and New Zealand at Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria. Photo / AP
For it was the certainty and composure that the All Blacks exuded which got them home.
They knew they wanted to use their driving maul as their weapon of choice and that if it didn't succeed they were prepared to be patient in bashing close to the ruck.
Lesser sides would have been frantic, but not the All Blacks. They were controlled, disciplined and supremely accurate in finishing the Boks.
What came through in those last 10 minutes was the All Blacks' conviction that having given themselves the chance to score two tries, they were going to take them.
It felt, in truth, almost inevitable that when the All Blacks won their last penalty inside their own half that they were going to snatch victory.
When Richie Mo'unga's penalty bounced the way it did, that was another sign that the game was theirs even though they still had all the hard work to do.
It was brave and it was thrilling but not in any way fortunate. Late wins like this are so easily and wrongly cast as lucky when they so rarely ever are.
It's an 80-minute game and the All Blacks used every second available to find a way to win despite being outplayed for the majority of the test.
They were admonished for not being able to conjure those last three winning points in the dying minutes a few weeks ago and now they have managed it, they deserve for their tenacity and sheer will to win to be acknowledged.
