THE GREAT, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

THE All Blacks bagged the Rugby Championship title on Saturday with two games to spare. Rugby writer

assesses the state of the four teams after the second grouping of matches

The men from South America prop up the table with just five points, earned from a win against the Springboks and a narrow defeat to the same opposition, and that could be as much as they get this year.

Augustin Creevy and his men have made a step up this year and fully deserved their win against the Boks in Salta, but not until they learn to play for the full 80 minutes will they seriously challenge the three ‘big brothers’. The Argentinians are making too many basic errors, and their ill-discipline remains a problem.

They have conceded 18 tries in total; too many from four games for them to be considered a solid outfit.

Next up is New Zealand in Buenos Aires and then Australia, at Twickenham.

After two crushing defeats by the All Blacks the Wallabies bounced back strongly against the Boks and Argentina in the last fortnight.

Surprisingly the Wallabies are second in the standings, with nine points, but proof of how inferior to the All Blacks all the other teams are can be found in the total points scored and conceded so far – the All Blacks have scored 169 points, the Wallabies just 76. Also the Wallabies have scored a paltry seven tries; the All Blacks 24.

In a different league, a class of their own, rugby from another planet. These are all terms that have been used to describe the current crop of All Blacks and they’d all be just about right. After thumping the Wallabies in back-to-back games, Kieran Read and his charges were supposed to be tested a little more by Argentina and the Springboks. While these teams did stall the juggernaut for a while, neither of them got close to ending the seven-year unbeaten run on home soil.

They are a formidable outfit and worthy winners. Let’s see what they do on the road.

After edging Argentina first up in Nelspruit it was hoped the Boks would steadily improve and be functioning well by the time they got to New Zealand. That didn’t happen.

Allister Coetzee and his men came unstuck in Salta – for the first time – and then fell to pieces in Australasia in the last fortnight.

They never really got into the swing of things against the Wallabies, and then on Saturday in Christchurch they made too many basic errors.

They were also all over the place in defence and ended up conceding six tries and scoring only one in reply.