MILLENNIUM STADIUM, Cardiff -- For all of the criticism surrounding New Zealand's undercooked and ultimately underwhelming performance against Georgia on Friday night, there was at least one shining light for head coach Steve Hansen -- the performance of Julian Savea.
The Wellington wing, who registered a hat trick of tries on his All Blacks debut against Ireland just over three years ago, added another marvellous triple to his collection after a stellar individual performance in south Wales.
He showed great strength to brush off Georgia's try-scoring fullback Beka Tsiklauri for his opener, before doubling his tally after just 16 minutes when latching onto the end of a slick New Zealand move. His third didn't come until the 73rd minute but a final flurry of pace and precision added late gloss to the scoreline.
"It's always good. It's not always about the tries but it's good to be in that situation and finish off as much as I can," Savea said after New Zealand's 43-10 victory against the Lelos.
"Tonight I actually touched the ball quite a few times so that was pleasing. We were trying to spread the ball wide because it was kind of cramped up in the middle so I was pretty happy to be able to get on the end of a few."
It was a performance that earned Savea stark praise from his team-mates too. Both Charlie Faumuina and Dan Coles shook their heads and smiled when asked about Savea's performance during the post-match mixed zone -- following the error-strewn showing against Milton Haig's side, there also seemed to be slight relief.
"When you give it to a man like him and he's one on one, he's a very hard man to stop," Faumuina said of Savea.
"I definitely wouldn't want to be the man tackling him." Coles added: "He was awesome. He bowled over a couple of their boys and it's always good as a front-rower seeing the big wingers do the damage."
Despite ensuring their place in the quarterfinals, New Zealand lacked their usual vigour. Their error count was abnormally high and, much like their two opening Pool C matches against Argentina and Namibia, cracks were visible - particularly across the middle.
With a potential last eight clash against either France or Ireland looming -- also in Cardiff, where the All Blacks lost to Les Bleus in 2007 -- Savea knows they must improve.
"It's always hard for our backs when the forwards are mixing it up in the middle. But we had to just get some 'carry hard' and some 'go forward'. Georgia realised we were doing it hard there and put a lot of pressure on us in the second half," Savea said.
"That was part of our problem. If you keep it simple and carry hard that's as simple as it gets and we were able to score then. We were probably impatient as well."