Peter Bills: Awesome All Blacks issue stark warning to the world
Australia 28
New Zealand 49
New Zealand's Mils Muliaina is tackled by Richard Brown during their Bledisloe Cup match in Melbourne on Saturday. Photo: Reuters
This was not the perfect All Blacks performance and, besides, we won't know its true value until the World Cup next year. After all, Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting in his entire lifetime.
But as an indicator of what is possible if your philosophy focuses on attack over defence, if your mindset is to free the ball and run it as often as possible and you have the skill set to complete that task, this latest demonstration of what the game is capable of now that the law interpretations have been tweaked, was more than adequate.
A harvest of seven tries at Melbourne's Etihad Stadium on Saturday means that the All Blacks have now scored 15 tries in three Tri-Nations matches this season and conceded just five.
Beyond dispute, they have adapted far quicker and more intelligently to the new law interpretations than any other side. They are playing a game beyond the capacity and understanding of any other nation. Yet this advantage may not last forever.
Was Graham Henry concerned that, despite his team's advantage at the moment, the gap might have closed by the time of the World Cup next year?
Old sores still itch, it would seem. "Do you mean have we have peaked between World Cup competitions again?" Henry retorted.
"Sides will get better, we expect that. That is only logical that teams will play better with the new interpretations. So we don't feel we are ahead of the pack by a lot, if in fact we are."
It is undeniable they are. Now the challenge lies before Australia, South Africa and the teams of the northern hemisphere. But on the evidence of these past four weeks, that challenge looks daunting.
Former Australian World Cup-winning coach Rod Macqueen had said in the week leading up to this match that the Wallabies would know where they were at after this game. He was right. They're nowhere. Well, that's not strictly true. They're all over the place.
The unforced errors they made were, at times, scarcely credible from a professional team.
Apart from Drew Mitchell, clearly not understanding plain English from a referee who warned both teams he would yellow card the next player guilty of deliberately slowing the play illegally, the Australians' entire performance was hapless.
They seemed to have a deliberate policy of gifting New Zealand the ball at restarts without the semblance of a challenge, so deep and aimless were the kicks.
Maybe they wanted to test the All Blacks' ability to run the ball back at them. Well they got their answer -- seven tries. That was fairly plain and conclusive.
But it wasn't in just the sheer common-sense field that the All Blacks were overwhelmingly superior. They played the referee like a puppet-master his marionettes and they had far greater invention and cunning. As for their decision-making, they were in another league.
And yet Henry was right when he said that this wasn't New Zealand's best performance to date. The accuracy of their execution against South Africa in Auckland was superior; likewise, their precision and timing.
That may seem crass criticism given that they scored seven tries in Melbourne. But three of them came against a 14-man Australian side and two of the others, Daniel Carter's try from a charged-down kick and Richie McCaw's after Adam Ashley-Cooper had unwisely tried to run out of defence without sufficient support, were gifts from the Wallabies.
Terrible
Australia were terrible: there was not a single thing about their game that measured up. They trailed 32-14 by half-time, four tries to one.
A second try from full-back Mils Muliaina just after the interval, when the Wallabies were already reduced to 14 men, made it 39-14 before some belated Australian pride kicked in. Ashley-Cooper and Rocky Elsom added further tries, following Mitchell's seventh-minute score.
But the All Blacks finished with tries by Muliaina (2), Carter, McCaw, Cory Jane, Joe Rokocoko and Corey Flynn.
Only Carter's missed conversion of the last try in the final minute prevented the All Blacks hitting 51, which would have been their record points tally against the Wallabies in 107 years of contests.
That was how bad it was from an Australian point of view.
AUSTRALIA -- A Ashley-Cooper; J O'Connor, R Horne (K Beale 56), B Barnes, D Mitchell; M Giteau (A Faingaa 77),W Genia (L Burgess 76); B Robinson, S Moore (S Faingaa 47), S Ma'afu (J Slipper 59), D Mumm, N Sharpe (R Simmons 47 ), R Elsom (capt), D Pocock, R Brown.
NEW ZEALAND -- M Muliaina; C Jane (I Dagg 75),C Smith, M Nonu (A Cruden 71), J Rokocoko; D Carter, J Cowan (P Weepu 33); A Woodcock, K Mealamu ( C Flynn 71), O Franks (B Franks 44), B Thorn (S Whitelock 56), T Donnelly (V Vito 72), J Kaino, R McCaw (capt), K Read.
REF -- C Joubert (South Africa).
- Peter Bills in Melbourne
Irish Independent
