It won't have taken the Wallabies long to pinpoint the moment their chances of victory slipped away in Bledisloe II.
Having made an excellent start, that should have included a try to Jake Gordon in just the second minute, Australia enjoyed a genuine foothold in the Sky Stadium encounter as it approached half-time.
While they would have much preferred a try just three minutes out from the break, a further three points from the boot of Noah Lolesio and a 13-12 lead wasn't a bad result for some diligent, if largely unthreatening, play that saw Fraser McReight held up over the line.
What happened next, however, was to prove yet again how important restarts -- and the exits that follow, are in Test rugby - and that there is no more dangerous team on counter attack than the All Blacks.
Earlier, Australia had enjoyed a measure of success running the ball out from their own 22. After McReight's 8th-minute five-pointer, when he was able to ground the ball despite some heavy All Blacks traffic, Len Ikitau burst through a loose tackle of Sam Cane, offloaded to Dylan Pietsch who then found Hunter Paisami back on the inside as the Wallabies tore past halfway.
But when Australia needed Paisami to take the tackle and set for the next phase, which would have come against an All Blacks' defensive line in complete disarray, the centre instead tried a miracle pass to Nick Frost that was clearly forward out of the hands.
From the restart that followed Lolesio's penalty, however, Australia could not open up the All Blacks; they shifted one phase to the left, then came back to the right, before being forced into a Gordon box kick from outside the 22.
Waiting downfield to unleash counter attacking terror? Will Jordan.
Given how he had created all sorts of defensive problems last week in Sydney, and earlier in Wellington for the All Blacks' second try, you knew the Wallabies were going to pay a heavy price.
With only Pietsch chasing through, Jordan immediately set off infield where he offloaded to Beauden Barrett just before Piestch was to bring the fullback down. From there, Barrett found Caleb Clarke, the winger slicing through between McReight and Paisami.
While the Wallabies duo did just enough to bring him down, the All Blacks had the front-foot ball they were after; a backpedalling Australian defence then infringed a couple of phases later.
Australia were then again penalised from the All Blacks' lineout drive, before Jordan cut back infield playing under advantage. Moments later, Clarke was in under the sticks after the winger ran onto a sublime short-ball from Anton Lienert-Brown.
Just when it looked like they could go to halftime with a one-point lead, Australia instead went into the sheds trailing 19-13 - and a poorly-executed exit was precisely to blame for the six-point deficit.
That's not to say the second half -- which the All Blacks dominated completely until the closing 10 minutes -- would have unfolded any differently had Australia been able to put the ball into touch, rather than invite Barrett to run it back at them.
But putting the ball out of play would have at least negated the All Blacks' three chief attacking threats against the kind of defence on which they thrive.
"If we could have gone into the changing rooms at 13-12 it would have given us a bit more impetus into that second half."
"I was really happy with that first half, and I think that try before halftime was a pretty tough blow to take," Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt reflected.
Jordan was a constant attacking threat throughout the 80 minutes in Wellington, just as he had been in Sydney a week earlier. He scored one try himself, had a hand in Clarke's first, and almost laid on another for Rieko Ioane after, you guessed it, another poorly-executed kick, this time from Pietsch.
The Wallabies' restarts, meanwhile, had been a problem throughout the Rugby Championship and while they appeared to try a different approach in Wellington, even had success with it early in the first half, it was always fraught with danger.
Exiting their own quarter, particularly after points, will be critical for the Wallabies when they arrive in London in late October, and play England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland on a Grand Slam tour thereafter.
Those teams do not boast the same counter attacking brilliance, or endeavour, as the All Blacks, but they will still make the Wallabies pay for poor execution of restarts or the clearances that follow regardless.
Elsewhere, Australia showed enough improvement throughout the Rugby Championship, their second-half capitulation against the Pumas in Santa Fe aside, to suggest that at least two of those games in the northern hemisphere are winnable.
And that Schmidt will need nothing less than that if the Wallabies are to take any small measure of confidence into next year's British & Irish Lions series.
For their current No. 10 world ranking inspires little hope that can be the case right now.