With test match after test match in a short window, All Blacks captain Samuel Whitelock admits it can be easy to get carried away with the "whole chess game of it".
Throughout the week, the teams work on their formula for how to best exploit the other before setting it into action on game day. Last weekend, Italy had success by attacking with their defence – causing the All Blacks all sorts of problems with their defensive line speed, and with a strong Irish pack looming, it's an area of the game the All Blacks have addressed this week.
"We've got a few ideas that we can do," Whitelock said. "Sometimes, we've actually got the right plan and it's just executing the plan, but I think that's the beauty of playing test match rugby week in, week out.
"Teams will come up with a formula, we're sitting here trying to think, 'Right, if we were playing us, what would we do – would it be A, B or C?', and that's part of the game. I think a lot of our senior players and our management love the whole chess game of it. Sometimes you can get carried away with that, and other times it's as simple as saying what we're doing is good, but we just need to be better.
"Part of that is how we deal with teams and we've got to adapt on the run; some teams might be bringing heaps of line speed, for example, and others might be using the hold and push. We've got to have things in our head to go to straight away which will hopefully exploit what they're trying to do to us."
