John Drake: Wayward start must be a worry

The All Blacks achieved the required result in Sydney, which sees the Bledisloe Cup back in Wellington and gives us a sound chance of regaining the Tri-Nations trophy.

Winning in Sydney in recent times has been hard. This time the Wallaby team were below par, with a mix of young greenhorns and, it has to be said, maybe a few past superstars on the way out.

Despite this, the Australians still thought they were a chance. This was based on the nation's normal confidence and their firm belief that the All Blacks are now up there with Greg Norman as chokers.

Both these theories are probably rapidly becoming redundant. The All Blacks won easily on the scoreboard and it should have been more. I am pleased with the win, but wonder what this team may achieve if they can solve some worrying problems.

The first 15 minutes were shocking. Graham Henry and co should have been furious with the lack of tactical appreciation to get down the right end of the field, secure simple lineout ball and defend accurately.

Right from the kick-off the All Blacks gave pretty good impressions of lemmings looking for a cliff. They rejected the idea of tactical kicking for some 50/50 passes and dumb penalties, which soon had them 13-zip down.

At the lineout if the Wallabies didn't win the long throw, then Keven Mealamu was throwing offbreaks.

To their credit, the All Blacks clawed back and crucially got the points either side of halftime. For the last 60 minutes they grew in authority and fixed those glaring problems, but were still inaccurate enough to miss a few scoring opportunities after all the hard work had been done.

Frankly, if passes had stuck and right options were taken it could have been 50 points. To be fair, the Aussies never gave up but the depth of their squad - and probably as a rugby nation - was cruelly exposed.

Changes are inevitable. I would suggest that if Eddie Jones doesn't make some change, someone might decide to change him.

This All Black team seems to believe in each other and, just as in South Africa, when they were points down they had the spirit to fight back.

The lineout steadied and pinched a few of the Wallaby throws. This became easier as the match went on, with the 1m gap between the two lineouts closing to more like 10cm.

The scrum was totally dominant throughout, and let's be clear: without some great kindness from referee Tony Spreadbury, the Aussies would have been slaughtered there.

In the end they got a few penalties after being crushed at the hit and having no idea how to stop the wheel. It was a disgrace that such power and technique should be punished when the jellyfish survived.

As normally happens, if you scrum well you ruck well. So the All Blacks got some crucial turnovers by driving the Wallabies off the ball after patient defence. In fact, Joe Rokocoko's great try came directly from a ruck turnover after some fantastic defence.

Pity about the officials missing what looked like a forward pass from Tana Umaga to Joe R. but I guess that made up for the early knock-on which the officials saw, but was missed by the other 80,000 at the match, and stopped an All Black try.

So, not perfect by any means but still some good features. Just wait until this team really click.

* John Drake is a former All Black test prop