Australia showing some early spark.

ABs defense is pretty awful so far.

Brilliant Wallabies 50/22 turned over for delaying the lineout. Pretty marginal and a big call. But the ABs concede another turnover…they look like they have one leg on the jet to  France. The Wallabies are winning the breakdowns.

Classical. The Aussie scrum is a disaster after both sides sub. But they level it at 20 all with a good penalty from the Quaalude. 

And then with a promising  running position emerging, the Quaalude drops a ball delivered perfectly. It was as good as a penalty because the Wallaby scrum was never going to hold….penalty….game over.

How many tests has Oz lost because they can’t scrum….how many times has the Quaalude blown a test.

Hard luck Wobblies, not easy to go to NZ and win. Just missed out. Did well not to allow the all blacks to shut them out. 

This team is getting better by the day. Might be interesting World Cup after all 

So are the oaks now saying the wee abs are not as great as they thought. 

Or Oz much better than they thought. 

Or what

Hahahaha. 

NZ were trying out their 2nd tier players with a few debutants. They pulled back the 2nd half with good substations. 

They know who their first choice 10 is now. Dmac for the bench. Richi is there 10. He also destroyed the boks much feared defence. 

They’ve now ticked all their boxes

The game was very  even in possession, territory, defenders beaten….but the roles reversed completely at the half. It’s as if the Aussie half time break completely sucked the energy out of the team. Were their instructions too cautious vs going out there and smashing into the ABs?

Another turning point may have come with the reversal of the 50/22 deep in the AB quarter withOz 14 points up and rampant. Another try may have put the game away.it was an odd decision the game was being played at a frenetic pace. A definite case of where the ref put a finger on the scales.

Both these teams looked ready for the WC, some of the Australian offloading in the first half was back to their best and the NZ subs would have done the bomb squad proud.

Weaknesses were obviously the Aussie scrum and  their half backs (Quaalude and White were pretty awful), but the starters weren’t much more convincing.

For NZ Jaws and Whitelock are looking pretty creaky and McKenzie’s defence was exposed.