All Blacks coach Graham Henry admits he's feeling "stress" as Kiwi countryman Robbie Deans looks to inflict a third straight loss on the New Zealanders for the first time in 10 years.
Henry, who edged Deans for the All Blacks job despite presiding over last year's World Cup disaster, has only known successive defeats once in his time at the helm but is staring down the barrel of even worse ahead of tomorrow night's crucial Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup clash with the Wallabies at Eden Park.
"(It's) another very important Test, obviously," Henry said today.
"But when you lose a couple, it puts some extra emphasis on this particular Test and I think that's pretty obvious.
"Since the involvement of this group of coaches, we've only lost once two Test matches in a row, so that puts a bit of extra edge on it, a bit of extra stress I'd imagine."
Pressed on just how stressed out he was feeling, Henry said: "There's always a lot of tension every Test match that you're involved in ... particularly the big ones.
"That's the way it should be, I guess. I think most people would go through that tension."
Last week's Bledisloe opener in Sydney - won 34-19 by Australia - was billed as Deans' chance to get square after missing out on the All Blacks job.
Asked what another loss to the one-time pretender to his throne would mean, Henry was candid.
"A bit more pressure I guess, disappointment," he said.
"We're very focused to do the best job we can. I think people are doing that. The team's doing that and that's all we can do.
"We've just got to make sure that we remain focused on doing that and don't get our attention on other things that don't matter.
"As to whether we're going to be good enough. We can't do any more than we're doing."
After a first-up win over South Africa, the All Blacks have lost successive Tri-Nations Tests to the Springboks and Australia and are aware a loss tomorrow night could, incredibly, spell the end of their campaign.
Henry finalised his line-up for the match today with Jimmy Cowan (knee) named to start at halfback and Andrew Hore (hip) at hooker.
Back-up No.9 Piri Weepu and rake Keven Mealamu will sit on the bench with loose forward Adam Thomson joining them at the expense of Daniel Braid.
Skipper Richie McCaw will come up against Deans, his former mentor at the Crusaders, for the first time.
"Looking on from last week, there's definitely a few things you can see that perhaps are a little bit familiar," McCaw said.
"But every time you watch the Wallabies, they do what they do pretty well and there was another example of that last weekend."
Henry said he would be persisting with an overhaul of his tactics following last week's loss, despite losing kicking specialist fullback Leon MacDonald to injury.
"We've put in place some policies which we think will work, and worked at those particularly hard and I think the guys feel good about that," Henry said.
"Once you've made those decisions and get them into practice, that's a great help. So we made those decisions early."
