Coach Ian Foster has hailed the All Blacks "patience", after their convincing 39-0 victory over Argentina on the Gold Coast.
After three consecutive victories over the Wallabies to open their 2021 Rugby Championship campaign, the All Blacks faced an entirely different challenge at CBus Super Stadium - a Pumas side with a gameplan that troubled them 12 months previously.
But any issues highlighted in the shock 25-15 defeat to Los Pumas in Sydney were long gone, as Foster's side ran in five tries, without conceding a point.
The scoreline doesn't reflect how well Argentina played, particularly in the first half, as they frustrated the All Blacks with their overtly physical defence.
Despite dominating territory and possession stats, the All Blacks were made to work harder than they had done previously in 2021 to turn their superiority into points.
The All Blacks didn't open the scoring until the 10th minute and couldn't grab a second try until the 37th, before the floodgates opened.
That patience against a staunch Argentina earned praise from coach Foster, whose side now sit comfortably atop the Rugby Championship standings.
"If you do your research and see how many tries they concede in test matches, it's not many," Foster says. "Even the series in South Africa, the South Africans found it hard to score tries against them - they built their scores in threes.
"I liked our patience. Sometimes in the past, we'd get a bit distracted when we get slowed down or things don't work, but we're trying to build a bit of resilience in that space.
"Things like the decision by Guz [Brodie Retallick] to take the three points to go from seven to 10 was a really good decision too. It just kept building the scoreboard pressure and enabled us to keep building some blocks after that."
Aside from their attack, the All Blacks defence earned the real tick of approval from Foster, denying Argentina any realistic chance of even scoring - barring a missed penalty attempt from first-five Nicolas Sanchez.
In fact, since the Sydney loss last year, the All Blacks have now kept Argentina scoreless in their last two encounters, winning 38-0 and 39-0 respectively.
"I felt our defence looked really strong," Foster adds. "At set-piece time, we gave them a lot of poor quality ball, and our defence was strong and aggressive at times.
"It wasn't perfect, but I think we imposed [ourselves]. I did feel quite safe watching them have the ball - it felt [like] we were pretty secure.
"We're making some good steps in that space. The key is we're enjoying the defence at the moment."
The All Blacks won't have to wait long before facing Argentina's attempted comeback, with the two sides meeting again at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium on Saturday.
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