All Blacks' captain Sam Cane remains adamant they're heading in the right direction, despite their historic loss to Ireland and record-low world ranking.
New Zealand slumped to fourth in the latest World Rugby rankings after they were beaten by the Irish for the first time at home in the second test at Dunedin last weekend.
The All Blacks have now lost three of their last four test matches, but Cane was confident in his response to being asked whether they're moving in the right direction with the Rugby World Cup just 14 months away.
"Absolutely. Rugby can be a simple game but we had 27 unforced errors which is ridiculous," he said.
"Our discipline let us down massively. A lot can change in rugby in seven days and we have to make sure we fix that up.
"But the belief is strong. The group is tight, we're together and I don't feel like there is any chinks inside the camp."
The All Blacks now sit behind France, Ireland and South Africa in the world rankings, their lowest-ever since the metric was introduced in 2003.
But Cane insists the ranking hasn't been a focus in training this week, and that good performances will rectify that.
"If I'm honest, we haven't paid too much attention to that. We've got enough on our hands digesting what happened in the weekend and focusing on the game this weekend to worry about things like world rankings," he said.
"That sort of stuff takes care of itself when we're playing well.
"I don't understand how the rankings work myself, but it's certainly a goal of ours that we make sure get back to being world No.1 but we realise the process of doing that is performing consistently every week and we haven't been doing that well enough."
Cane admits the All Blacks are hurting from the defeat, but are embracing the challenge of a series decider at Wellington on Saturday.
"Situation is not what we wanted but now we look at it and embrace it. It's a good challenge for us, it's do-or-die, it's just like World Cup stuff," he said.
"The drive is massive. We're hugely disappointed with what we dished out on Saturday. Credit to Ireland, they played well but we need to be so much better.
"We have pride in the jersey and we're not happy with what we put out. We are working really hard to make sure it doesn't happen again.
"It's about challenging your emotions in the right way. We're angry and disappointed in ourselves but there's no point dwelling on that performance too long.
"We have to pick ourselves up and shift our mindset really early and highlight things we need to get better at. That's quite energising and exciting."
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