Wallabies prop Allan Alaalatoa has revealed there's been an "edge" at the Wallabies first training sessions since their record loss to Argentina just over a week ago and their "tough" return home.
Given a week off following their 40-point loss to the Pumas in Santa Fe earlier this month, the Wallabies returned to camp on Monday where they underwent an intense review session with coach Joe Schmidt before they hit the paddock for a walk-through ahead of Saturday's opening Bledisloe Cup clash with New Zealand in Sydney.
Racing out to a 20-3 lead after 30 minutes in their fourth Rugby Championship match, the Wallabies fell "off a cliff" according to Schmidt after his side conceded 38 consecutive points to fall to a humiliating 67-27 loss, their most points conceded since 1997. They now must bounce back to face a wounded All Blacks side that have suffered their fourth straight defeat to the Springboks and handed over the Freedom Cup for the first time since 2009.
"There definitely is that edge," Alaalatoa told media on Tuesday of the team's training sessions so far. "It's probably fueled by a little bit of that disappointment, which you've got love and respect, like everyone came in with an edge yesterday and that was only a walk-through session.
"We got to make sure we channel that in the right direction and understand that we're clear in our plan and know that emotion and everything will come off the back of that, but yeah, we just got to make sure that we have full clarity on what we want to deliver.
"We've had some tough learnings, and the boys are working hard. Today is probably one of our toughest Tuesdays, not driven by coaches, but from players, so the effort's there and putting in the work behind the scenes to, not only rectify that performance, but to be consistent.
"We're slowly chipping away and building and understanding that if we put in a good week of prep, then the boys are ready to go in front of what we believe is going to be a good crowd over at Accor Stadium.
"It was tough [after the game]. There was certainly some disappointment post-game and flying home. I thought that it was really good to get home and connect with our loved ones, our families and then we came in a couple of days ago and just reviewed the last game and understood that when we put our game plan together we were really good. There were passages there in the second half where we didn't and we were poor.
"It's important to understand those learnings and to move on, but to apply that at training to get that confidence to then go and execute on Saturday."
Setting up camp at Sydney Olympic Park where they will face the All Blacks on Saturday night, the Wallabies know they must execute a full 80-minute performance if they're to upset their Kiwi rivals, while the prop revealed Schmidt and assistant coach Simon Cron haven't provided any unknown All Blacks insights from their time with the side.
"100% [we need a full 80-minute performance] and the boys know that. The All Blacks are a tough outfit as we all know, but a lot of our players here have played a lot of the individuals in Super Rugby, which I think is good for us, but our focus is on ourselves.
"We understand the threats that they're going to bring, but we want to pour all our attention into us delivering our system over and over again as much as we can. As you said, delivering that for 40 isn't good enough. You got to be doing that for 80 and those are the those are the places where we're going to be pouring in our energy throughout this whole week to then again give us the belief and confidence on Saturday to go out there and just play.
"Probably nothing that we haven't heard before, even with him [Schmidt] and Cron, because I think the most important message for us is to deliver what we say we're going to deliver and understand our own process in our own systems and what we want to execute ourselves. We need to put all our energy into ourselves and delivering on what we say we are going to deliver over and over again."
The Wallabies faced plenty of criticism following their mammoth loss including calls from former England players to cancel next year's British & Irish Lions tour in Australia and instead go to South Africa instead, asked if the players had listened to the critics Alaalatoa said the time wouldn't focus on outside noise.
"No [we haven't paid attention to critics]," Alaalatoa said. "Everyone's going to have their opinion and there's always going to be that external noise, for us as leaders and as a group, we got to focus internally on what's important to us.
"We understand that those distractions are going to be there, people are going to say what they think of us, but again what is important for us is what we believe ourselves and executing our plan throughout the week to then go out there and then perform and then change the external noise that's happening, but the front of our mind is to think and focus on the internal on what we're doing inside the group."