Will Genia says Wallabies must get mentally tougher as All Blacks loom

STAR halfback Will Genia says the Wallabies have to get mentally tougher if they're any hope of taking the next step and winning momentous games.

STAR halfback Will Genia says the Wallabies have to get mentally tougher if they're any hope of taking the next step and winning momentous games under nerve-bending pressure.

That psychological improvement must come fast too, with Genia warning anything less will set the Wallabies up to be "flogged again" at ANZ Stadium by the All Blacks in just 40 days.

A 25-point hammering at the hands of the Lions - the Wallabies' fifth-worst loss under Robbie Deans - instantly deflated the optimism re-building around Australian rugby, and clearly left players shattered post-game as well.

But Genia said the side would have to move on quickly or face more of the same.

"We lost, we got outplayed. If you are going to lose confidence from something like that, you're not mentally tough enough," Genia said.

"You are always going to lose games, and sometimes you lose terribly. You cop it and move on.

"We have Super Rugby to go back to, and then we've got the All Blacks. I don't think there's any harder team to play than the All Blacks, and if you're too down, you're going to go in there and get flogged again."

With domestic finals and tough Tests around the corner, players will - as they must - march on swiftly but the matter of fixing attitudinal problems within the Wallabies surrounding major matches of significance can't be left behind and ignored.

As with every Bledisloe Cup series under Robbie Deans' tenure, and at the 2011 World Cup, the Wallabies stumbled badly in the biggest of games on Saturday night, where victory would have secured the Tom Richards trophy.

Genia said the Wallabies had to be psychologically stronger to cope with the unique pressure of such massive events, and to impose their game when it counted.

"Like any big games, physically you match each other, size for size and speed for speed, fitness. It's just mentally, we have to make sure to learn from these experiences and take the most out of them," Genia said.

"The sides who can hold their nerve and have composure in big, tight moments within games are the ones who succeed.

"The Lions did that, and you look at a side like the All Blacks, they never lose their composure. They stay disciplined to what they want to achieve. The best thing we can do is learn from that, and take that into future games, and be better for it."

Genia said the decisive moment in the Wallabies' third Test loss was, bizarrely, in the very first minute of the match, after confusion between Kane Douglas and he saw the kick-off dropped.

A scrum penalty and a Lions try followed, and more of both in the first and second halves destroyed the Wallabies.

"Looking back on the game, that was probably the turning point, the fact they scored so early, got scrum dominance and were just full of confidence, and it flowed right through the whole game," Genia said.

"We were chasing the game right from the start. They had confidence, got that scrum from a knock-on, they get the half-arm from the first scrum, so they know they're going to have dominance from the set-piece so they back themselves there. They just kept the scoreboard ticking over and over and over with three points. That was the difference I think."

Genia said the Wallabies were "severely outplayed" but denied being mentally flat.

"It wasn't stage fright. If I look back on the game, they were just really dominant at the scrum," Genia said.

"They dominated not only on their ball, but on our ball as well.

"We probably just make too many errors. We make half-breaks, we lose the ball, we try to offload. At times we were probably slow to chase it on our ball at the breakdown, we deny ourselves any momentum."