Bad news piling up for Wallabies

DANIEL CARTER is back, All Black front-rowers are taking potshots at their Wallabies counterparts, and South Africa showed them how to beat New Zealand on Saturday.

In all, it wasn't the most satisfying weekend for Australian rugby.

For those Wallabies who woke up in the middle of the night to watch the Springboks keep the All Blacks at bay in the Bloemfontein Tri Nations match, it just accentuated the pain of their wasting their chance of beating New Zealand in Auckland the previous weekend.

The Springboks' haphazard performance, with which they comfortably accounted for the All Blacks, emphasised how far New Zealand are from their best and, if an opponent remains focused, they can be swept aside.

Australia had that chance and bombed it. South Africa were in the same position on Saturday and completed the task.

As importantly, the All Blacks' effort, where they fought back for the second week in a row to threaten momentarily late in the Springboks Test, confirmed they have something the Wallabies don't - resilience. The All Blacks know it is vital to keep the pressure on for the duration of the Test and to be close to their peak near the end of the game. They did that both in Auckland and Bloemfontein.

The Wallabies are not in the same league. Although they competed right until the end at Eden Park, the level of passion was inconsistent and through wasted opportunities and a slackening off at inopportune times, they unforgivingly lost a Test they could and should have won.

Numerous Wallabies last week emphasised the pain of letting the first Auckland Bledisloe Cup victory in 23 years slip through their grasp.

And they need no reminding that in the next three Bledisloe Cup matches this season they won't be confronting an All Blacks line-up with any weaknesses, but one back at full strength.

Chief among those strengths is Carter, and there is no doubt that the next time the Wallabies meet New Zealand, in Sydney on August 22, they will encounter the All Blacks' No.1 playmaker.

Despite having a let-off in Auckland, when the inferior Stephen Donald was the All Blacks five-eighth and flanker Richie McCaw was coming back from injury, the Wallabies didn't make full use of their opposition's perceived frailties. No such luck in Sydney, where Carter will again be controlling the midfield and McCaw will be at his peak. The signs were there at Bloemfontein - where the All Blacks captain was a menace at the breakdown - that it doesn't take long for McCaw to return to his best.

The most distressing news on the weekend for the Wallabies was that Carter, after six months sidelined with a ruptured Achilles tendon, completed 80 minutes of a club match near Christchurch.

More than 3000 people headed to the rural town of Southbridge, which has a population of just 900, on Saturday to watch Carter's return for his club side. After his first match for Southbridge since 2001, Carter said he was "just happy to get through 80 minutes".

"The Achilles and rest of my body felt good, even though obviously I was playing within myself a little bit," Carter said.

Meanwhile, the ammunition to fire up the Wallabies' pack at this week's three-day Sydney training camp has come from All Blacks prop Tony Woodcock, who told the Sunday Times newspaper in South Africa that the Australians were far from threatening in Auckland.

"To be honest, I didn't think they were as physical as I expected they'd be," Woodcock said.
That should have the Wallabies frothing until their next Tri Nations match in Cape Town on August 8.

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