SA 53 - 8 Australia

Another case of what a difference a week makes - and again at Australia's expense.

Australia did, I think, play a bit worse than last week. Not really badly, although there were poor patches, but never really well either. Quite a lot of that must go down the Boks who played their socks off. You could be critical and point out that there were several really good try scoring opportunities that Boks butchered at various points in the game - they could have been into the 70's if everything had gone to hand. That said, every player is entitled to the odd mistake and that was really what they were, rather than anyone having a bad game. Butch James might be the exception - he had a rather poor kicking game but played well in the other aspects of the game.

This game might paper over the cracks that PdV is causing in SARU, or rather between SARU, the players and the fans. A resounding victory tends to do that after all. It was, however worth noting that the PdV game plan went out the window. Whether that's what he decided, or what the players decided or what isn't clear, but this Bok side played like the sides of old. They kicked the ball in defence. They quite often (at times probably too often) kicked the ball in attack for territory. They hit the breakdown in numbers and cleared the Wallabies out. Bekker and the whole front row carried the ball close, hard and on a few occasions wider and faster, but never really wide: there was always someone (or several) with pace further out. The back row were all over the place doing all the things they're meant to do. (Matfield tackled well, but didn't appreciably carry the ball often, but with the rest of the forwards doing that he wasn't missed in that role.) Although the points were largely scored out wide, the gaps were made because of the tight, close play sucking in the defenders rather than any real attempt to play the ball wide at all costs.

This is setting up an interesting conflict in a fortnight. Australia have really only played well twice in this Tri-Nations, but both times it's been at home. The All Blacks have played well both at home and away, but can they play well in Australia in two weeks time, can Australia play well at home again? It's a winner-takes-all encounter in which, in the unlikely event of a draw, the ABs have the edge.

On a different note: I've seen a fair bit of the ANZ cup coverage. There have been a lot of commentators saying OMG NZ Rugby is in a terrible state with retirements and people moving away to play overseas. Whilst it is true that there are a lot of potential ABs elsewhere in the world (at one count there was a possible entire first choice team not available for selection recently, certainly an immensely strong AB Possibles to play against the incumbents) the ANZ Cup is, as usual, demonstrating that NZ Rugby has a really pretty healthy system underneath its top layers (that's the ABs and Super-14s I guess) to bring new players through. Whilst some of those may never make it all the way, there is some depth appearing again, even in "problem" positions like Lock.