A potent mix of talent, humility in a special side

These All Blacks stand apart because they set themselves such high standards.

pB2 pB4 pB2 Sir Graham Henry, whose opinion has to be automatically respected, says the 2016 Wallabies are the worst he’s ever seen.

Last night the Springboks, an outfit not even good enough to beat Australia, tried to turn the world of test rugby upside down, and beat the All Blacks.

To do so South Africa had to eliminate the errors that have plagued them, to find from somewhere skill levels that so far this year only the All Blacks have reached.

As the Pumas did in Hamilton, in the first quarter there was a very good early try from the visitors, to Bryan Habana. As events would prove it was really only a whistle past a graveyard. So what do we know now? That the sell out crowd on a crisp Canterbury night didn’t seem to care that the game was expected to be embarrassingly one sided. Bored? They cheered the national anthem.

That the repeated statements by Steve Hansen and his coaching team that they see test rugby now as a 23 man game are not (just to be very clear, that’s not) hot air.

The difference when fresh All Back legs running on late in the game is that they’re attached to the likes of Wyatt Crockett, Charlie Faumuina, and Matt Todd, who are only a breath away from being in the starting 15.

That Elton Jantjies has flashes of brilliance but he’s also as flaky as a croissant.

His dropping of a simple catch straight after Habana’s try led directly to a try by Israel Dagg.

That Dagg looks less like a fullback playing on the wing with every match in the 14 jersey.

That just when you thought Ardie Savea might not be able to break tackles quite so brilliantly when the defence is more determined, just after halftime he suddenly explodes through tackles, to set up his backs, then returns for another lash in the same movement, which culminates in a try to Ben Smith. And just in case there were any doubts at all about his remarkable strength, not much later he’s dragging two tacklers with him and scoring himself.

That Malakai Fekitoa no longer looks like an apprentice. The defensive partnership he has with Ryan Crotty gets tighter all the time.

That if Kieran Read was buried in the tight stuff in Hamilton, he still has the gas to be a force with the ball, and the spring to be quite happy to call himself for crucial lineouts.

That it’ll be fascinating to see whether the slightly weird penalty against Sam Whitelock for an alleged neck roll is somehow transformed by British hacks into another black mark against Owen Franks, whose charge into the breakdown propelled Whitelock, and the Springbok he was wrestling with, forward.

That this All Blacks squad is unlikely to fail for a lack of humility.

Three weeks ago, two former All Blacks were invited into the All Black team room after the test with Australia in Wellington.

They were greeted by players (who had just won by 20 points), who shook their hands and addressed them by name, but as ‘‘Mr’’, not by their Christian names.

Then, in a moment one of the former players says left him quite emotional, one of the stars of the night, Beauden Barrett asked if they felt the team had measured up to All Blacks standards.

It’s in such unstaged moments you find the truth of a team’s attitudes.

Respect for the past isn’t everything. But when it’s allied with so much talent it becomes a potent mixture.