Injured scrum-half Jimmy Cowan, who is still battling a knee injury to be fit for the second Bledisloe Cup and Tir-Nations match against Australia on Saturday, has insisted there is solidarity and collective responsibility within the All Black camp.
The Kiwis face losing three Tests in a row for the first time in ten years if they fall to Australia this weekend, and losing a proud unbeaten record at Eden Park.
The squad has been decimated by injury and the player drain to Europe though, and the pressure is mounting on the coaches who have admitted to tactical flaws in their defeat in Sydney last week.
But Cowan snuffed out any rumours of despondency or rifts within the camp before they had even started on Thursday.
"We're all a unit, we all take the blame as players and coaches and it's up to all of us to fix it," he said to SAPA.
"We all understand we didn't play our best rugby on Saturday, we had a lot of ball and we played at the wrong end of the park."
Full-back Mils Muliaina agreed, saying it had been up to the players to play the situation as well as the coaches to get it right.
"A lot of the game reflected the tactics we took into the game, we didn't change them and that comes down to the players," he said.
Coach Wayne Smith, who had been candid on Tuesday about the tactics for the game being wrong, agreed, saying that coaches' interference could often be more negative than positive.
"Sometimes you enter a game with a mindset and it's hard to change when you're out there," he said.
"We don't give a hell of a lot of messages.
"I think our job is to become as redundant as possible during game time. We're trying to teach them to take responsibility and run the game.
"Under pressure sometimes that theory goes west and we give a few instructions, but generally they run it."
Muliaina, one of the All Blacks' better performers at ANZ Stadium, was confident the team could bounce back, noting they made several line-breaks but lacked their usual finessse.
"I definitely believe there are still a lot of opportunities for us, there's a lot of talent in this team. If we can get the ball retention right and execution I think we'll be a different team altogether."
Then there is captain Richie McCaw, who is back to make the contest at the breakdown a little more even, but who will be tasdting his first rugby for some six weeks after picking up an ankle ligament strain in June.
"For the last (couple of) weeks I've been doing a bit of running but that's never going to make up for match play," he said.
"Hopefully the adrenaline kicks in. It'll hurt but you have to get on with it.
"George had a pretty good game last week, he ensured we didn't get the front foot ball we were after and with Waugh there - two of them will be real menaces."
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