Justin Marshall: Hansen keeps the faith in epic win

Hooker Dane Coles makes a break at Suncorp Stadium in a game which epitomised the All Blacks’ never-say-die attitude. Photo / Getty Images

For some it might have looked like desperation, the last throw of the dice; to me it looked like a matter of faith. Steve Hansen has that by the truckload and never was it more evident than at Suncorp Stadium when he made a series of extraordinary substitutions and they came up trumps.

The fate of the two coaches could not be more starkly opposed. Ewen McKenzie has resigned after his position became untenable, and Hansen returns home with yet another victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

He had such faith in his game plan, such faith in his squad, that he was prepared to take some of his best players off at crucial times on Saturday to chase the result.

Look at some of the changes he made: Patrick Tuipulotu for Sam Whitelock, Sam Cane for Liam Messam, TJ Perenara and Colin Slade for Aaron Smith and Beauden Barrett, who had both been outstanding. Some of those guys have not had a lot of rugby lately but there was no easing them into a low-leverage situation; instead they were thrown into a game of extreme pressure.

And they came up trumps.

Zero in on Slade for a minute. He missed touch with a penalty that could have been costly, but was a few minutes later handed the ball and asked to win a test for the All Blacks off the kicking tee. Cast your mind back to Lansdowne Rd last year: Jonathan Sexton had a kick that would have won a test for Ireland against the All Blacks. He missed. Slade nailed his.

It sums up this team. Nobody has a ruthless edge like them. Nobody gets themselves in positions to win games even when they're the second-best team on the park like the All Blacks do. You could point to Ellis Park in the last Rugby Championship test and say it doesn't always work out, but seriously, it took a set of extreme circumstances for that loss to come about. The Springboks were good for their win, don't get me wrong, but if a player hadn't been injured near the end, the television producer would never have had the opportunity to rewind the tape to the Messam incident and we would have been celebrating another improbable come-from-behind All Black victory.

It's staggering. You can only sit back and admire what they do. They are not playing anywhere near consistently well enough at the moment but they haven't got an ounce of quit in them.

The Wallabies made a big mistake on Saturday when they took the shot at goal to stretch the lead to six points with a few minutes remaining. It put the fate of the game back in the hands of the All Blacks. They should have kicked the ball to the corner and gone for the try that would have put the game out of reach. They were too afraid to win the game and instead hoped the All Blacks would make a mistake and lose it.

I just know that under the posts while they waited for Nic White to nail that kick, Richie McCaw, Keven Mealamu and Conrad Smith would have been saying words to the effect of: "This is great, we've got a chance to win the test. Perfect."

It must be a horrible feeling for opposition teams these days, who've played out of their skins for 70-75 minutes, have a lead and yet still know that the All Blacks are going to keep coming and coming at you in waves.

That's why Australia had to kick for the corner and keep the ball. The All Blacks looked really effective with ball in hand all night; they just didn't have enough of it. They made the two tries to Cory Jane and Dane Coles look ridiculously easy and if they had more of that front-foot ball it could have been a far more comfortable victory.

I feel enormously sorry for McKenzie. It rams home to me that in these days of social and electronic media, mistakes mean careers go down the drain. As soon as stuff such as the Kurtley Beale texts gets into the public domain it is catastrophic.

In the old days, a blow-up between a player and a staffer could have been dealt with internally and everyone could have moved on with some dignity. Not now.

What's happening in Australian rugby is a terrible state of affairs. That coach's job is a poison chalice with just 11 months to go to the World Cup - so much so I doubt Michael Cheika even wants it.

Richie McCaw might have been going against the grain when he said world rugby needs a strong Australia, but I concur with him 100 per cent. At the moment they're in a shambolic state and it's a goddamn shame.