The media release from the ARU on the 51-20 All Blacks defeat of the Wallabies at Eden Park had this headline: ‘Wallabies unable to breach the Eden Park fortress’.

Ah, so that was the problem. The All Blacks tryline at Eden Park was somehow protected by a moat and the Wallabies tryline was on a steep decline that allowed the All Blacks to run in or be awarded their six tries.

What a load of nonsense.

It wasn’t just as if the All Blacks defence was like a medieval castle in its resistance. That was true. But the Wallabies played stupid rugby. They had no tactical plan, for all of Ewen McKenzie’s talk about knowing how to beat New Zealand teams.

Worse still, they had no notion of how to compete against the smart tactics the All Blacks used to thwart the rush defence (or rush no-defence) the Wallabies have adopted under McKenzie.

One of the phrases I hear from commentators, coaches and players before a Test is that the team that wins will be ‘the one that wants it the most’.

Balderdash.

Every team goes out there on to the field wanting to win. But wanting to win and actually achieving this are different matters. In fact, too much emotion can get in the way of being clinical, effective and clear-thinking in the heat and passion of battle.

It is easy, too, to work players up to an emotional pitch so that they go out into the Test almost foaming at the mouth, or any other metaphor to describe a heightened emotional state seeking victory.

The best of coaches (certainly long-term winning coaches) tend to be unemotional in their approach to preparing their teams. Think Wayne Bennett or Jack Gibson in rugby league, and Sir Graham Henry and now Steve Hansen in rugby union.

What these coaches really do, however, is provide their players with the skills and the game plan that will give them a best chance of winning. Once these basics are understood and inculcated, of course, it doesn’t hurt to inject a bit of emotion as the trigger to explode the shots into the opposing forces.

And you could see that with the All Blacks on Saturday night. They were fired up. They released their shots, which inflicted total damage. But the weaponry was there to fire off.

One of the most admirable things about the All Blacks and an invariable sign that they are out to play is that they come out of their dressing in their jerseys and shirts, no track suits. No matter how cold it is, they do this.

The Wallabies and most of the other Test sides comes out in their track suits. This is a sign that they are hanging back from the actual conflict, and haven’t got themselves truly up for the contest.

Ewen McKenzie is big on mind games. Well, here is some mind games advice for him: bring the Wallabies out against the Springboks at Perth in two weeks’ time in their golden jersey, ready for the fray.

And give them them a real game plan, rather than an aspiration to run the ball, good as this is for the Wallabies as a vision sort of thing.

First things first. Pick a front five that can scrum. Don’t pick the best ball runners, or the best tacklers, or the best passers, or the best at clearing out the ruck and mauls. Pick the best scrummers.

The scrum, especially under the new regulations that have taken out the hit and re-established the contest, is the point of first and most primitive contact for the best rugby teams. Jake White, admittedly a negative coach but one with terrific insights into the game, reckons your tighthead prop is a side’s foundation stone.

McKenzie needs to take notice of this and look for front rowers who love scrumming and who do it well.

The All Blacks have also introduced the concept of a scrumming second rower and jumping second rower. Brad Thorn played the scrumming lock role in the Rugby World Cup 2011 triumph. Now they have developed Brodie Retallick, a monster of a man, fast around the field, too, which is a bonus to go with his massive shoving at scrum time.

Look at the selection of the Wallaby second-rowers. Two jumpers rather than scrummers. The task for McKenzie is to find the best scrumming second rower in Australia. Perhaps it is James Horwill. Perhaps it is Will Skelton. Whoever it is, this scrumming-second rower needs to come in and Rob Simmons needs to go.

We now come to Wycliff Palu. When his team is going forward Palu is tremendous. He is strong in the tackle. He topped the tackle count for the Wallabies with 12 on Saturday night, with Simmons (9) and Michael Hooper (9) next.

But there is a lack of speed and dynamism in Palu’s play. You rarely see him backing up attacks or making attacks out wide as, say, Kieran Read does.

I would bring in Scott Higginbotham at 8. He is good in the lineout. Can play wide, something that Bob Dwyer hates but can be an asset.

The All Blacks, for instance, used Liam Messam – a former sevens great – out wide. His hands let him down but this was his first game for a month. The plan was there. It is a plan that Higginbotham can work to very well, as he showed several years ago with the Reds.

As for the backs, I would state a general rule that most of us (and I include myself) have tended to overlook in the selection of the Wallabies this year. Test rugby is different – tougher, faster, more skilful and intense – than Super Rugby. Good or even very good Super Rugby players do not necessarily make good or very good Test players.

Some players, with special attributes of speed or power or rugby nous, can play better at the Test level than they do at Super Rugby level. The art of selecting is to look for these players.

Beauden Barrett, for instance, is more effective for the All Blacks in defence and attack than he is for the Hurricanes. Ryan Crotty, who looked to be a journeyman for the Crusaders, played so well at inside centre on Saturday night that worries about the depth in this position for the All Blacks seem to be over.

But look at the Wallabies selection, for tougher, faster and more skilful and intense players. Stand up Israel Folau. He ran for 150 metres, with Kurtley Beale and Rob Horne running for 25m. The All Blacks best three for metres made were Julian Savea (100), Aaron Cruden (64) and Ben Smith (59).

Pat McCabe and Rob Horne don’t have have the speed or power to be Test wingers. Henry Speight is coming in soon but there must be other wingers in Australian rugby who have speed. As the mythical gridiron coach is supposed to have said, “You can’t coach speed.”

All great teams, in whatever sport, are fast. They think quickly and they run even quicker. The Wallabies are just too slow in their thinking and their running.

This is why I’d keep Kurtley Beale in the back line. But not, never ever, at number 10. He is not an organiser. At his best he is an improv rugby artist, playing what is in front of him with speed and skilful passing.

The Waratahs backline four, Nick Phipps, Bernard Foley and Adam Ashley-Cooper should be starters against the Springboks. The big Tevita Kuridrani needs to go on one wing. He made some impact on Saturday night when he came on. And on the other wing? Someone with real pace.

There must be someone in Australian rugby, while we are waiting for Speight, who can run faster than James Slipper. Whoever that someone is, pick him.

Now for one further rant, to go with all my other rants about the stupidity of referees throwing around yellow cards like confetti at a wedding.

We had two last week from the South African referee Jaco Peyper. He himself admitted to Steve Hansen that the first one, against Wyatt Crockett, was wrong. The second one, against Beauden Barrett, was also wrong, according to the former South African top referee Jonathan Kaplan.

On Saturday night, we had the French referee Romain Poite hand out three yellow cards in an ‘anything you can do I can do better’ sort of nonsense.

Card one punished Richie McCaw for playing the ball off the ground.

Card two punished Rob Simmons for dangerous play, pulling the leg of an All Black forward during a driving maul.

Card three punished Ben Franks for playing the ball off the ground.

None of the three yellow should have been given. Was McCaw actually on the ground when he played a ball that had spilled out of a ruck? What constitutes being on the ground?

Where was the dangerous play in the Simmons card? This stupid decision, which seemed to come from the South African assistant referee Stuart Berry, who was disciplined earlier this year for wrong decision-making, virtually sank the Wallabies. They were down 9-6 at the time and grimly hanging on. The All Blacks twice devastated the Wallabies pack without their second-rower. They scored two tries and while Simmons was off the field, and the Test was gone.

I couldn’t see what Franks actually did to get a yellow. But the incident was in the 76th minute of the Test. It hardly mattered to the result. Why give him a yellow card?

The argument in the Peyper yellow cards and two of the Poite yellows (not the Simmons one, of course) was that the players concerned had behaved in a ‘cynical’ way.

But if cynical play is to be the criterion, virtually every infringement will result in a yellow card. Minutes after McCaw was sitting in the naughty chair, Nic White was offside when the All Blacks attacked the Wallabies tryline. White ran slowly in the advancing All Blacks attack, preventing a crucial pass from being made and a try scored.

He was penalised. But why wasn’t he given a yellow card? His action was cynical. And if this is the test, he should have been sitting beside McCaw in a second naughty chair.

The point here is that the yellow card is not for cynical play. It is for professional fouls. And when the yellow card system was introduced, a professional foul was understood to be repeated infringements in the scoring zones denying the attacking team a chance to score a try, continued after a warning has been given.

Now, apparently, there is no warning. No repeated infringements. Just the belief by the referee that the action was cynical.

As I have said, and it deserves repeating, virtually all the offences can be included in the cynical category. The point here is that players make a decision on a 50-50 situation that the referee will support their 50 per cent reading of the play. Sometimes the referees do, sometimes they don’t. And worse, sometimes the plays are 100-0 situations, where the player is right and the referee is wrong.

Last week, as it happens, it was revealed in the New Zealand media that Craig Joubert, after a review, had contacted Richie McCaw to apologise for penalising him in the dying minutes of the Waratahs versus Crusaders Super Rugby final.

Bernard Foley kicked the winning penalty. I don’t know how consoling for McCaw the Joubert apology has been.

So the yellow cards are being given out for the wrong reasons and often on the wrong facts. What are the odds that, say, Romain Poite or Stuart Berry might be ringing up Rob Simmons and apologising for getting the yellow card decision against him wrong?

There is one other point, probably the most important, about the yellow card mania that needs to be made. The practice is against the spirit of rugby.

The IRB Charter on the game states as the main principle of rugby is the continual contest for possession of the ball. This principle differentiates rugby union from rugby league. League has taken the contest for the ball out of its game. It is applied only from kicks. There is no scrum contest. There is no contest at the ruck (remember Benny Elias and his penchant for raking the ball back from opponent’s rucks?) and there is no contest in the tackle, except one-on-one tackles.

In rugby, the contest is everything. It is, as the IRB say, the main principle of the game. The laws around the rucks, mauls, scrums, lineouts and even general play, though, are complex. Players have to make a myriad of decisions in a second or two about whether to go for a ball in a ruck or not. The situation is chaotic. What the player sees and does and what the referee sees are often different matters.

Often, as Jaco Peyper and Craig Joubert have conceded, the players (and especially great players like Riche McCaw) are right and the referees are wrong. That is why McCaw is one of the greatest players in the history of rugby.

So Lyndon Bray, the manager of referees for SANZAR, give out the edict before the next round of Rugby Championship Tests: no more yellow cards, unless it is the clearest of cases that the yellow is deserved.

Can you hear this Lyndon? No more yellow cards!

Steve Walsh refereed a terrific Test between the Pumas and the Springboks without having to use a yellow card.

Jaco Peyer and Romain Poite should have done the same.