Wallabies need to rage as they prepare for return

The Wallabies will be in Waiheke this week, fuming about their tragic set piece and second-half meltdown.

Those failings were their downfall in Sydney, but nestled in the bush, among the kereru, millionaires and vineyards, that inability to deliver on the basics will become their greatest weapon.

It might seem that after a 38-13 loss that the pressure is all on Michael Cheika and the Wallabies and that their plan to hang out on Waiheke Island is the stuff of lunacy and desperation.

But in the insanely fine margin world of test rugby, the Wallabies have, however unlikely it may appear, a number of key advantages to exploit.

There should be rage in the Wallaby camp this week. There should be a ferocious determination to fix a lineout which descended into a shambles, a scrum that looked like it came equipped with a reversing camera to help it retreat with speed and precision and a system glitch that saw them become a touch loose and frantic when half chances opened up.

And above all else, they have history as their driver – a 15-year All Blacks coach Steve Hansen

period in which they haven’t held the Bledisloe and the knowledge that if they don’t win this test at Eden Park, it will be 16 years since they last had any.

Mentally, it’s all on a plate for the Wallabies and in fact the pressure is just as much, if not more so on the All Blacks to find a way to re-set and reach Eden Park just as focused and just as determined as they were in Sydney.

And this essentially is the nut they must learn to crack not just this week, but every week they play between now and the World Cup.

When it all boils down, this is the key to test football for the All Blacks: the endless ability to perform, process and recalibrate regardless of outcome.

Their technical, tactical and physical prowess only becomes a true weapon when it is glued together by clarity of thinking and collective honesty

What I do know is that teams that get beaten learn better than teams that win.

to understand that being great one week builds precisely zero guarantee it will all happen again the next.

“Their backs are against the wall and they are going to improve,” was All Blacks coach Steve Hansen’s frank assessment of what he’s expecting from the Wallabies in Auckland.

“What I do know is that teams that get beaten learn better than teams that win.

“Teams that get beaten are hungrier than teams that have won. Our big challenge this week is to prepare better than them and be hungrier than them.

“The biggest learning thing you