TO THINK that New Zealand had such room for improvement. They silenced the Millennium Stadium, impaled the European champions and then talked afterwards about how much better they could be.

There we were, in the bowels of the stadium, hanging on the words of Daniel Carter, who had just thrown in another 80 minutes of evidence to suggest that he is the most influential player in world rugby, and he starts talking about looking more closely at his game to work out where it all went wrong. “A few handling errors,” he mentioned, and “a few of my passes, which weren’t really hitting the targets”.

Here, thank the Lord, is the world of rugby crystallised into a simple equation: beating Wales by 38 points, we discover, is but a fleeting flash of something half-decent, yet get Carter to learn to throw out a decent pass or two and the All Blacks can really get motoring.

Carter, as if we could forget, scored a brace of tries and nailed every one of seven kicks at goal, most of which were from close to the touchline. The high standard by which he was comparing himself, he said, was the one he set in that exquisite and complete exhibition of the arts he put on display in the Wellington international against the Lions.

To think that it was only then, a mere four months ago, that we were labouring away with comparisons to Jonny Wilkinson and reflecting on the passing over of the baton of greatness — it just shows how fast the game can move on. The “who’s the greatest No 10” debate today makes for the briefest of conversations.

It is worth noting, too, that Carter had to play himself back into form on Saturday. He broke his leg against Australia in the Tri-Nations in August, which was why, he said, he had been a victim of nerves beforehand. “I didn’t really know how it would go out there,” he said. So now he has got his confidence back, you wonder how long it is until his rugby is once again Wellingtonesque.

Perhaps the most obvious trait that Carter does share with Wilkinson is his enduring search for perfection. To come off a 26-point game and talk about passes failing to hit their targets is a bewilderingly Jonny-like tendency.

But in this, Carter is not alone. It was a mark of the England team, pre-World Cup, when they were establishing themselves as the global superpower, that every dynamic licking of the world’s allcomers would come with an epilogue of seemingly obsessive determination to dwell on those minimal margins for improvement. Likewise these All Blacks.

Here, for instance, are the views of Chris Jack, after his man-of-the-match performance: “We made a lot of mistakes early on and could have got some more points. In a tight game, when you don’t get many opportunities, you’d probably end up losing. We’ve got to learn from that and finish them.”

And more from Carter: “The first half was frustrating. We were creating opportunities and not really finishing off, panicking a bit. We realised that if we held our composure, we’d score some points.”

What is daunting is that they are so clearly so right. Byron Kelleher’s flagrant waste of a seven-pointer in the first half — tryline gaping, had the opportunity to pass, elected to run straight into Gareth Thomas — was a case in point. But, aside from the furious barrage of Welsh artillery that they sustained towards the end of the first half, they were never really required to elevate their game. They simply reside at great heights before there is even a demand to ascend farther.

So quite where they can get to when they have their first team out, when they are playing at their peak and Carter has sorted out his apparent passing problem — that is a prospect for the rest of us to conjure with. The rout of Wales was achieved, remember, despite the decision of Graham Henry to rest certain key players in order to assist in the development of others. Dip into their replacement resources and the changes appear seamless.

Wales, too, had a number of key personnel missing — mainly through injury — and how the gaps showed. The same Wales side also lost key personnel last season — two captains in Colin Charvis and Thomas, for starters — and yet they won the Six Nations grand slam. All of which sounds like the start of the kind of hemispherical debate that the All Blacks, one suspects, will have helped to settle by the end of the month. For the moment, they are simply interested in developing a broader group of players who can win international matches and it is an awesome sight.

History is a primary theme for this New Zealand touring side, their European journey coming on the centenary of their first visit to Wales, when their traditional predominance has been open to question. One hundred years ago, they began setting the standards for the world game; a century later, though, it would appear that they are doing the same again.