Rugby: Cup wrap is within All Blacks' reach

All Blacks after the Bledisloe Cup test match. Photo / Brett Phibbs

It's a simple enough equation for the All Blacks in their quest to retain the Bledisloe Cup this week - they have to extend 50 minutes of brilliance by half an hour.

Deliver for 80 minutes in Dunedin what they managed for 50 in Sydney and it will be all over for another year.

The Wallabies saw that first 50 minutes as a catastrophic failure of their defence - a capitulation of their basics. The All Blacks believed it was somewhere close to their best football in the last decade and as always, the truth lies somewhere in between although probably closer to the New Zealand version of events.

Some of the timing, execution and awareness in that period was exceptional. The speed the All Blacks moved the ball and moved themselves was at a higher level to what they produced in 2016.

There have been plenty of All Blacks teams that have felt they were loaded with pace, but this team are maybe different in that, with Rieko Ioane, Damian McKenzie, Ben Smith and Beauden Barrett, they have four deadly strike weapons. They have four men who can beat defenders one-on-one just by putting the throttle down and it was that element which destroyed Australia, and it will be pace which the All Blacks will again see as the key to victory this week.

The Wallabies can blame their extraordinarily high missed tackle count on themselves, but it was a near impossible task for them dealing with so much weaponry and there is nothing more capable of ridiculing a defender than out-and-out pace.

The question, then, is how can the All Blacks sustain that attacking venom and play at the tempo they want for longer? How can they ensure they stay task-focused, disciplined, accurate and composed for longer?

They will encounter a rock hard field and dry ball in Dunedin and will again look to start at a frenetic pace. They will again be eager to see if they can deliver that lightning-quick recycled ball to use the pace of their back three.

And again, they will most likely forfeit kicking out of their territory, kicking at all, in favour of trying to stretch the Wallaby defence unusually close to their own goal line.

The difference this week is that they will be aware of the need to ignore the scoreboard. They will know that the second half regression came about because too many players started to think they didn't need to do the hard work any more.

It was a valuable lesson to learn - that in test football everything has to be worked for.

It wasn't so much that passes that were sticking in the first half weren't in the second. It was more a case of the All Blacks throwing too many they should have held on to later in the game.

"We were all frustrated because we have come to expect a lot from these guys and it wasn't where we wanted it to be," said All Blacks coach Steve Hansen.

"So I would say everyone in the [coaching] box was frustrated and everyone on the park was, too.

"So that is another lesson for a group that is re-establishing itself and will give us something to focus on in Dunedin. It won't do us any harm."