Rugby World Cup: Can the All Blacks stop the rolling maul?

It's jumping ahead a bit, but later this year, who knows, maybe the story will start on a cold winter's night in Christchurch with the All Blacks playing Argentina.

It was midway through the second half of that opening Rugby Championship game that the All Blacks were provided with a rather painful and telling insight as to what lay ahead.

The Pumas, or a version of, were all but done and dusted when they burst into life with two of the easiest tries imaginable. Both came from lineout drives - a clean catch, a quick set and before the All Blacks could even think about pulling it down, the ref's arm was up and the Pumas were big smiles and high fives.

It was never going to be enough to turn the game around or endanger the outcome on the night. But it was more than enough to legitimately wonder if the All Blacks had a serious problem.

It was an alarming 10 minutes of football as it had become clear during Super Rugby that the rolling maul had effectively been adopted by some teams as their sole attacking weapon of choice.

All Blacks and fans ready for Argy-bargy

The rules, already a nonsense, were barely being enforced and were little understood and it was a gift horse whose mouth no one was going to be daft enough to look in.

And yet, knowing where the threat lay, knowing that the Pumas were never going to be able to resist having a rumble the first time they found themselves in appropriate driving maul territory, the All Blacks were able to do precisely nothing about it.

Not just once, but twice and coaching staff around the world would have been nudging each other with a definite sense of "oh yeah, we've got something here".

The previously infallible All Blacks suddenly appeared to have a genuine weak spot.

And so it was with those two tries that the All Blacks had their minds sharpened to the dangers presented by the rolling maul. It wasn't as if they didn't know beforehand, but what the Pumas did was remind the All Blacks that not many teams share their ambition to play beautiful rugby.

It's not such a hard business to get eight men in a huddle and have them waddle with purpose - the ball buried somewhere between Auckland and Istanbul.

"It opened our eyes to something we weren't doing too well," says All Black hooker Keven Mealamu. "It is something we are trying to do better at. Obviously up here it is a big part of the game so we are constantly looking at it to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Whatever the problem was that night in July, it hasn't been repeated since. The All Blacks haven't conceded a try to a lineout drive since. They went to Ellis Park the week after they played Argentina and managed to prevent the Boks from using the rolling maul as an effective weapon.

Same when they played Australia - they were able to prevent the Wallabies from building momentum.

That's been the key to their success - they have been good at attacking the pressure points early to ensure opponents can't get set.

"It is very hard to stop once a team has got a maul set and is moving forward," says All Black lock Luke Romano. "Generally if you do stop it, it can look like you have done so illegally and you end up being penalised again. It is a matter of trying to stop it prior to it starting otherwise teams work really hard on it and once again, it is hard to stop."

In the last month, the All Blacks have spent yet more time honing their defence. They accept they'd be crazy not to. The rolling maul is going to be a huge feature of this World Cup - a point clarified by South African coach Heyneke Meyer who landed in England and promptly said that scrums, breakdowns and lineout drives were where the tournament would be won and lost.

Their opening test against Argentina is going to be the perfect place to assess how much improvement the All Blacks have made in defending lineout drives. It is going to be the perfect place to see how well equipped they are to ensure opponents aren't able to pick up easy tries in an area of the game where there is a high degree of expertise among the leading sides.

"Set piece defence is a big cornerstone of our game," says Romano. "It is something we pride ourselves on. Obviously after what happened in Christchurch ... we visited that area and looked to fix up the errors where we felt we let ourselves down.

"That is just the reality of the modern game now. A lot more teams are using that driving maul and we have to be able to combat it. There's been a little bit of work put into it.

"Time will tell I guess. It is a big strength of the Argentinians so come Sunday [Monday NZT] I am sure we will be tested in that area."