Sports Comment with Nick Tolerton | Canterbury Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Canterbury

Winning or losing, Messrs Henry, Hansen, and Smith front up to the media like a trio of undertakers who've run out of pine planks and embalming fluid.

And if the ABs don't beat the Boks tomorrow at Jade, they really will have reason for that lugubriousness.

This game looks a litmus test for the All Blacks' World Cup hopes.

Win it and we're on the right road. Lose and the word "crisis" will be in the headlines.

The All Blacks have the memory of their first 2007 loss in their last start to bury, the challenge of playing a team deemed to be a second 15, some tangible frustration among the players over the rotation policy, and even occasional murmurs of a Canterbury-Auckland divide in the camp.

They're trying to play expansive rugby - "high risk, high return," as one player describes it.

If they get it right it could be devastating at the World Cup, but at present it's being blighted by errors. Hard grounds in France should showcase this football, but an Arctic night at Jade won't. The World Cup is two months off and that is when the All Blacks need to peak, but for a team that has been talked up incessantly as favourites to win the trophy there is a lot of improving to do.

Some players have said the team has been at only 80% in their 2007 tests so far - and few fans would argue.

With only two tests left before the World Cup it would be great to see the All Blacks not just win tomorrow, but to grab the game by the scruff and win with some conviction, and for key guys like Dan Carter and Richie McCaw to go up another level.

Both Australia and South Africa will be encouraged for the World Cup by the way they held their own against the All Black steamroller for so long.

And the performance in Melbourne was a reminder that, like Germany in World Cup soccer, Australia can never be under-estimated in international rugby.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the All Blacks.

They've lost only two matches in two years and could have won both. And as the players keep telling us, there's been a lot of soul-searching since Melbourne and they're their own harshest critics.

Hopefully they're about to give the Holy Trinity reason to look less funereal.