New Zealand 19 - 8 South Africa

As you might guess from the scoreline this was a heavily defensive match. That isn't to say that there was a lot of attacking flair on display, particularly from the All Blacks (but on occasion from the Boks too) but there was always a scrambling, scrabbling body to dot the ball, make the tackle or whatever. The scoreline was helped to look more respectable than it probably should have been by a dodgy offside call against Kaino denying him his second try in the game.

There was an interesting no try as well. I think it was the right decision, Carter kicked through and chased, Habana appeared between Carter and the ball and grounded it. BUT Carter's hand was on the ball too... you'd have to say they both grounded the ball so is that a try? The guy with two hands and a chest on the ball ought to be awarded the grounding of the ball, but I'm not sure that's what the laws say.

Speaking of the laws, the game had a lot of niggle. It would be tempting, and true, to say that was largely from the Boks, but that is because they were the ones defending for most of the game. It would also be tempting and true to say the refereeing team turned rather a blind eye to shirt pulling, late hits, high tackles and the like, particularly as the Boks tried to intimidate Carter but whilst this definitely contributed to a highly defensive match it didn't seem to spoil the match.

As expected the ABs dominated the scrums. Rather unexpectedly they very much held their own in the line out too. That was helped by avoiding kicking the ball out on most occasions, but the Boks did and the AB line out worked pretty well throughout. In fact the weakest part of the set piece, ironically, was the 8-9 axis. Kaino didn't seem to control the ball on several occasions, which put Ellis under quite a bit of pressure. Mind you, the boot was firmly on the other foot for the Bok puts-in, as their scrum creaked, groaned, went round in circles, went up, went down, went backwards (sadly often illegally and without being penalised).

I don't normally do Man of the Match comments and this time I'm really pleased I don't. I'm pretty sure that Carter will get most of the plaudits, but it would be fair to say that just about any of the ABs should have been in the running. After about 20 minutes they flashed up a little player stats thing: Conrad Smith, 3 tackles. What that didn't say was that all three were huge tackles that completely stalled a promising look Bok move dead in its tracks. Sivivatu started the game marking Habana. Until he moved off Habana each time the latter got the ball he got harassed and almost always tackled and often turned over by Sivivatu. In fairness, except for that try, Wolf did a good job too, just not as dramatically so as Sivivatu.

Nonu looked a bit anonymous in defense, but with Carter and Smith tackling out of their skins, this wasn't a weakness for the ABs, and carrying the ball forward he looked as fluent, strong and dangerous as always. I could keep going - every player, just about, had their highlights and their moments to hold their hands up and be counted, at least if they were playing in black. Burger and Jantijes get a big shout for the guys in green.

Whilst Carter might be the obvious choice, I'm torn between Thompson and So'oliao - How much higher praise can there be than "McCaw's absence wasn't a weakness" I wonder?