I remain unconvinced that the pack is not the start of our troubles. Set piece and ruck. But the common theme in rugby reviews is the halves and reading play. When it is on (or not) and when the kick is a better option.
Was our pack that bad? We butchered a couple of lineouts but overall we won 10/12 on our own throw and all our scrums.
Philip threw one of the intercept tries so chalk that one down to a forward.
Lolesio missed a gimme penalty goal.
Banks kicked dead from the penalty after the red card.
Lolesio took a terrible option when he kicked instead of passing in the All Blacks 22 which butchered a clear try scoring opportunity.
Banks ran away from his support and got tackled into touch on a break.
Koroibete made a poor defensive read on Akira Ioane and then Ikitau and Lolesio also failed to tackle him.
This was a game where we controlled our own ball reasonably well, had plenty of possession and territory and got beaten comfortably.
I think by far the largest element of the gap between the two teams was the failure of our backline to take opportunities and making big errors.
Our forwards did enough that the game should have been close. Of course they can improve but I don't think it can be avoided that there were some serious underperformers in the backline.