And it's here, with their muscles swimming in lactic acid and the oxygen barely reaching places it needs to, that the All Blacks will back themselves to emerge the stronger. It will be in those final, excruciating last minutes that the All Blacks will be mentally stronger and fortified with the aerobic depth to record their sixth straight win against the Boks.
That's the plan. The All Blacks have learned to believe in it because it has worked for them so many times in the past. In the perennial search for the answers as to what sets the All Blacks apart, South African coach Heyneke Meyer came up with two that were as good as any: the All Blacks have a better tactical kicking game and are fitter than everyone else.
Without Daniel Carter, the first part is maybe not true. But the second is: the All Blacks are the best conditioned team in world rugby.
They believe they can outrun, outlast and outplay everyone. They believe they can do what no one else can and sustain high intensity, high tempo, high-skill rugby for 80 minutes. That's why they live for the final 10 minutes: it's here, as they have proven so many times in recent years, that they believe they will get their rewards. That the game will open up and they will be better equipped to capitalise.
"You are hurting," says All Black No8 Kieran Read. "You are certainly hurting. In the final 10 your muscles are sore. To give you an example, if you come off before 65 minutes you are fine the next day. You don't hurt -- your body is nowhere near as sore. Go past that point of 60-65 minutes then you are playing on fatigue.
"You are pretty much at the point where you are just about gone. For the last 10 minutes you are under fatigue and you are just trying to hang on. But that is where you have trained. It hurts ... your muscles are shutting down but you have to try to push yourself on."
The last time the All Blacks were in Johannesburg, it was their stamina that got them home. The Boks weren't able to be as clinical when fatigue entered the contest. The game got faster and the All Blacks got better because they had the necessary physical preparation -- across the squad -- to not suffer a dip in performance.
"Collectively if you have a level of endurance in the guys' legs then it is a massive advantage," says Read. You do feel it out there on the track when you perhaps have that advantage.
"We know there are no short-cuts in this team and everyone is conditioned to a level ... so they will last. In saying that, too we are actually playing at a higher level than anyone else. We feel that if we take teams to a certain point -- by being able to place at pace from the start -- we feel they will drop off before us as long as we can dictate that pace.
"Sometimes it is pretty hard to do that if conditions aren't good or if you give away penalties. But if we are able to maintain a pace of game we believe we can outlast teams."
How much work has been put in by the All Blacks to have such belief in their conditioning is barely comprehensible. It is not by chance that they have become so good at winning big games in the closing stages.
There is an incredible depth of science behind their approach: they have purposefully built lean, yet powerful athletes who can explode into the collisions but also handle the aerobic content.
The balance is not easy to strike and neither South Africa nor England -- who are both trying to evolve from set-piece teams into more expansive adventurers -- have got it quite right.
If the game is quick from the start, the All Blacks will be favourites to win. Favourites because they can still execute their game-plan with the same pace and precision in the 80th minute as they can the first. And to coach Steve Hansen's mind, those dark patches in any test, when the athletes across the park are feeling the burn, have become the most fertile territory.
"Especially in the big games," he says. "They are arm wrestles and even that last five or 10 minutes of the first half. You have just got to stay in the fight until which time the other team mentally unfolds a bit. That requires both mental fortitude and physical fortitude -- aerobic fortitude.
"It only takes 20 seconds to score a try. 10 minutes is a long time. It is about staying composed enough to take the opportunity when it comes ... as long as we have still got our wits about us and our composure, then we can win a game right on the death."
- By Gregor Paul of the Herald on Sunday in Johannesburg
