Mission: Defeat the All Blacks starts now.
That is all that’s on the mind of the Wallabies as they head into camp on the Central Coast this week.
After two weeks of mainly strength and conditioning work, it’s strategy that has begun to take over now, captain Stephen Moore said.
“We'll probably bring a bit more of our specific game stuff in this week,” he said.
“Last week we did a lot of strength and conditioning work and we'll continue that this week.
“This week we'll start to bring our specific game material in, our game content for the Test next Saturday.”
Wallabies coach Michael Cheika spoke last week about how the All Blacks would have evolved from their 2015 incarnation and Moore said he wasn’t expecting their trans-Tasman foes to be stagnant either.
“I think every team evolves over time and they'll be doing things a little bit different to what they have in the past but other things they'll keep the same,” he said.
“I don't know exactly what they'll do but I think we'll probably spend most of our time on our own preparation and making sure we know our game really well and put ourselves in a position to go out and execute that really well next Saturday.”
A Hurricanes Super Rugby final win only added to the intense competition for New Zealand spots, Cheika said, with Beauden Barrett and TJ Perenara supreme for the champions.
“Looking at our opponent, there’ll be a few interesting selection issues to see around the positions I mentioned both openside and 10 but also for Julian Savea and that wing position which is hotly contested for them as well,” he said.
“Congratulations to them and now they’ll take that into the battle to play against us on Saturday week.
Only Drew Mitchell and Will Genia have been really restricted in recent weeks, making their comebacks from injury, but as they assembled on the Central Coast Cheika said he expected the full complement to be training by the end of the week.
“Everyone’s on deck,” he said.
“There are a couple of guys doing a bit of rehab work specific to today but nothing going to rule them out.”