Rugby Union

Hell of a test match in the end; glad the ABs managed to get the result to see off the departing legends with a W.

Some folks might look at some of the nervy errors from the debutants early on and feel like they might not belong but pretty much the whole team were playing badly and that compounded some pretty aggressive scrum refereeing from Dickson who went to a straight arm penalty a second after the hit in the first scrum and then took the word of an AR 50m away for the 2nd penalty - both of which to my mind were Aus not taking the hit.

Anyway after the rubbish first half most of the All Blacks stood up and especially the bench sealed it for us in the end. I thought Stevenson just got better and better as did Finau and Tupou Vai'i.

If any questions got answered, for me its that Finlay Christie is not on the money and i'd feel much happier if Brad Weber was going as one of the 3 halfbacks. Christie just wasn't getting to the rucks on time and while his pass was great when he got there it meant slow rucks when if he'd predicted the location a bit better he'd have been able to shave half a second to a second off.

Wallabies looked awesome in the first half and really up until they subbed on White & Cooper who didn't really have bench impact in the same way the ABs bench did. Another match though where the prop subs were very weird and they left it too late to get a guy clearly struggling off the park.

0-4 this year looks bad on paper but they are getting better every week and with their pool can build into the playoffs so I reckon they're still in a decent shot to go deep in the RWC.