The All Blacks have locked up the Bledisloe Cup for the 19th consecutive year with an emphatic 57-22 win over the Wallabies in Auckland.
Photo: Brett Phibbs/Photosport Ltd 2021
New Zealand powered away in the second half to wrap up this year's series against Australia at a half-full Eden Park on Saturday night.
The win is a record high score against the Wallabies, beating the 54 points scored in Sydney in 2017.
After the All Blacks were 33-25 victors in game one at the same venue last weekend, game two was in the balance at halftime as the Wallabies trailed by just six.
But, as they so often do, the home side turned on the class in the second stanza, adding five tries to the three they had scored in the first half to seal victory.
See how the game unfolded with RNZ's live blog here.
Game two got off to a fast start, with All Blacks centre Rieko Ioane's 80 metre intercept try after just five minutes followed quickly by a response from Australian wing Andrew Kellaway.
After the match settled somewhat, tries to Brodie Retallick and Ardie Savea seemed to have the home team in command as halftime loomed.
Diminutive Wallabies halfback Tate McDermott, though, had other ideas as he scooted under the posts just before the break to keep the visitors in touch.
But any hope they had of heading to Perth with the series still alive was extinguished within 20 minutes of the resumption.
All Blacks centre Rieko Ioane dives over to score Photo: PhotoSport / Brett Phibbs
Two tries to hooker Codie Taylor and another to wing Sevu Reece, putting the All Blacks 43-15 up, effectively meant the silverware would once again be staying in New Zealand.
Will Jordan and David Havili also got their name on the try-scorers list for the hosts in the dying stages, with Kellaway's second five-pointer merely a consolation for the Wallabies.
All Blacks coach Ian Foster said the way the team responded to the visitors' pressure was key to the record win which he described as a "big step" forward from the opening Bledisloe Cup game.
"It was important that we made a statement tonight," Foster said.
"They really played a combative physical game in that first 40 and you can see that they wanted to take us on up front and so it was a good old ding-dong test match in that first period.
"But I thought we stuck to our plan even when we lost a couple of things early, we didn't panic, didn't go away from what we wanted to do and yet what was exciting is when we got the opportunity with the ball [the forwards] were quite lethal at latching in to the space in front."
All Blacks assistant coach John Plumtree credited stand-in captain Sam Whitelock for leading by example in the forwards battle.
"He's lead this team beautifully from the start of the year and he put in a real captain's performance tonight, the Aussies came at us up front probably harder this week than they did last week and I think we stayed really composed and he leads that," Plumtree said.
Wallabies coach Dave Rennie said in the end the scoreline didn't matter.
"We were well beaten and well beaten because we didn't treasure the ball well enough."
"[I'm] disappointed that we didn't build on what we did first half and there's a number of men who emptied out the tank prior to coming off, pretty disappointed with the impact that we got off the bench compared to the French series where our bench were outstanding."
Photo: PhotoSport / Brett Phibbs
The Australians were unable to capitalise on Ardie Savea's yellow card which came in the 41st minute, something which Rennie and captain Michael Hooper rued.
"New Zealand were infringing - and pretty bad illegal infringements - and thought that yellow probably could have come before the end of the first half but we got it at the start of the second there," Hooper said.
Hooper took the blame for being unable to make the most of the man advantage.
"I take a lot of responsibility there for not being able to rally our guys there in order to get a better outcome in that pretty pivotal 10 minutes so that's something as captain I've got to look at."
The win did not just extend the All Blacks' streak in the Bledisloe Cup. The team's unbeaten run at Eden Park, which dated back to 1994, was taken to 45 matches, while the Wallabies had now not won at the ground for 36 years.
It was also the 15th straight year Australia had failed to beat the All Blacks in New Zealand.
Saturday night's result meant the third and final Bledisloe Cup test in Perth in two weeks' time became a dead rubber.
