The great decline must be arrested

The second Bledisloe test should provide a definitive answer whether this All Blacks side has what it takes to win the World Cup.

The essence of a World Cup campaign is the ability to respond to pressure and the All Blacks are under a considerable amount this week.

It’s not just that the Bledisloe Cup is under threat following the Wallabies’ record win in Perth last Saturday. The plot is much thicker.

The last 10 months have been the most difficult and least convincing of the past decade. There has been a tangible decline in standards. The All Blacks have won seven, lost three and drawn one of their last 11 tests, but take out the Sunday picnic fixtures against Japan and Italy and their win ratio is barely above 50 per cent since September 2018.

But there has also been an intangible decline, an increasing sense of this team having lost its way in some difficult to detect manner.

It has been an age since they cranked the handle and decimated an old foe. It feels like Beauden Barrett’s four-try heroics in the second Bledisloe Cup test happened in a different lifetime rather than August last year and one more lacklustre performance, or another defeat, will tip the balance from the All Blacks being a team rebuilding their attack to being a team with a broken attack.

The onus to fix things sits with everyone involved, but it starts with the forwards, who looking back through the last 10 tests, won’t find much to satisfy themselves they produced what they intended.

The All Blacks pack was beaten up in Perth just as it was the week before, for most of the game at least, by the Springboks.

It has become such a recurring theme in recent tests that it is difficult to simply assume standards will lift at Eden Park as they so often do.

In November last year, the pack struggled against Ireland, and while the All Blacks beat England in London, the victory didn’t come on the back of a dominant performance from the forwards.

And nor was there any sense of rage and control about the forwards in the back half of the Rugby Championship last year.

The pack has delivered just the one commanding performance in their last eight tests, which was in Yokohama against the Wallabies.

The debate in recent weeks about the value of having Richie Mo’unga at first-five and Beauden Barrett at fullback has been pointless for the simple reason the All Blacks have failed to build any foundation on which this partnership could flourish.

Rugby is an evolving sport but it’s still true the team which dominates the collisions and looks after the ball, has the better chance of winning.

All Blacks forwards Sam Cane and Dane Coles revealed on Monday a lack of desire was the problem in Perth; that collectively, the team, and presumably more specifically the forwards, didn’t have the right mindset.

To turn up once to a Bledisloe Cup test with the wrong attitude is unfortunate but do it twice would be unforgivable.

If the All Blacks can’t find the urgency and intensity at Eden Park in the return leg on Saturday night, then you would have to worry about their ability to find it at the World Cup.

The same would apply to the individuals who are now under specific scrutiny this weekend.

Joe Moody and Owen Franks haven’t done enough either at the set piece or away from it.

They have looked like a couple of honest plodders in comparison with their Australian, South Africa, English and Irish front-row peers.

Both of the All Blacks’ starting props can play with the ball and get around the field.

The fact they haven’t done that in recent weeks is illustrative of the bigger issue at play.

The issue is too many individuals have been getting by in recent tests rather than driving their performance to new levels.

That would be the case with Ben Smith, who may still be struggling for sharpness after damaging his hamstring in Super Rugby, and Rieko Ioane, who was better in Perth than he was in Wellington, but still not the dynamic, explosive force he was in 2017.

Rarely in the past few years has there been this much pressure on the All Blacks to impose themselves and adjust their trajectory to provide a basis in fact — rather than faith — that they remain a genuine World Cup contender.