It may not be what New Zealand's opponents wanted to hear, but All Black captain Richie McCaw has promised that his team will get "much better" in their remaining internationals on the year-end tour to Europe.

Having accounted for Wales, albeit with a scratchy 19-12 win, in Cardiff at the weekend the Kiwis now face Italy, England and France on successive Saturdays.

It required some desperate late defence in Cardiff to secure the win, but McCaw made it clear that they are not happy with the quality of the performance.

It is expected that a bunch of fringe players ? the likes of lock Anthony Boric, flank Liam Messam, scrumhalf Andy Ellis, flyhalf Stephen Donald, Luke McAlister and Mike Delany ? will get a run against Italy.

And they are the players that McCaw wants to see raise the bar for the established Test stars.

"The guys are happy enough [with the win in Cardiff], but they realise we can play some better rugby too," McCaw told NZPA before the team headed to Milan ahead of the encounter with Italy.

"In the first half we kicked a bit much ball away and took a few wrong options.

"At half-time we said we needed to play a bit more and we did that for the first 20 after half-time. They're happy to have got the result because it wasn't easy out there, but realise that we've got the potential to be better.

"That's exciting, you still want a tough test match when you feel like you haven't nailed it all. "

Continuity will be the tricky task this week with coach head coach Graham Henry saying he was comfortable with all 33 players in the squad getting their chance to impress.

He said after the pre-planned selections for the Wallabies, Wales and Italy, the slate would be wiped clean for selections for England and France and they would pick their strongest line-up for the Marseille test.

This week a largely second-string side will get a taste of the big time against coach Nick Mallett's Italy, with San Siro a 75 000 sell-out, the second biggest crowd for a non-soccer event in the stadium's history.