All Blacks coach Graham Henry knows he must act fast to arrest the declining fortunes of his side after Saturday's defeat to Australia.The coach has had to deal with defections to the European leagues and injury to his inspirational skipper Richie McCaw and he admitted that it will be a steep learning curve for the new faces in the squad.
"We haven't got a lot of time to get better so we need to turn it round pretty quickly," he said. "Some of the younger guys found the pace of the game and the intensity difficult. They will learn from that."
The New Zealand media have, unsurprisingly, spared little in their assessment of the team's performance, with the Bledisloe Cup up for grabs in the return match in just seven days time.
And the beleaguered coach admits that work on the training pitch is the only way to turn things around ahead of next weekend's crunch clash in Auckland.
"We have a lot of work to do," he added. "We've got three games left in this Tri-Nations to turn it round.
"There's a lot of guys who haven't played at this level before, half the side, and they are going to get better with this experience.
"We have to get our structure right before Auckland. We turned over a lot of ball and the way we were playing the game wasn't right."
