New Zealand will have to significantly reduce their error rate if they hope to bounce back in the Tri-Nations series following back-to-back defeats against South Africa and Australia.

The Wallabies raced to the top of the Tri-Nations standings with a come-from-behind 34-17 win over the All Blacks in Sydney on Saturday — a victory that stretched their victory run under new coach Robbie Deans to five matches.

However, the All Blacks are on the other end of the scale — having now lost to the Springboks and Wallabies on consecutive Saturdays — with pressure mounting on under-fire coach Graham Henry.

Despite dominating possession, with 73 percent going the way of the All Blacks, the Kiwis failed to turn their advantage into victory. They conceded 23 turnovers and made 18 handling errors, to waste the advantage they had in terms of ball won.

"It was a very tough game, but overall we just made too many mistakes," All Black stand-in captain Rodney So'oialo said, adding that against a team like Australia you just can't afford that. "We got punished."

So'oialo said he was proud of the way his team got back into the game after twice going behind — 0-10 and 5-17 — but again he came back to the high error rate.

"We always knew it was going to be very tight and we worked hard to come back ... even holding the lead for a while.

"But we simply made too many errors and we got punished," he said, adding that "wrong decisions and losing focus" were contributing factors.

"It is very disappointing, the high error rate, and as I said, you simply can't afford to make that many mistakes in these games and against a quality team like Australia."

He admitted that they have a lot of work to do in the build-up to next week's return Test in Auckland — a game the All Blacks simply have to win if they don't want to fall behind in the race for both the Tri-Nations title and Bledisloe Cup honours.

"The boys have to learn from the mistakes that we made today," the captain said.

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