Global media: The All Blacks' best is yet to come

All Blacks wing, Julian Savea scores a try against Australia during the Bledisloe Cup match. Photo / Nick Reed

The global rugby media has lauded the All Blacks for setting a new world record for successive test triumphs, acknowledging it wasn't a vintage performance at Eden Park but still heaping superlatives on the side.

While Wallaby coach Michael Cheika's bitter post match conference received plenty of headlines, rugby writers around the world also ensured they marked New Zealand's historic achievement with banner headlines and lengthy match reports.

Paul Rees in the London Observer noted "Australia had the ball but New Zealand scored the tries".

"The Wallabies played some of their best rugby since last year's World Cup, taking the game to the All Blacks and enjoying 65% of the possession, but they lacked the opportunism of their opponents," Rees told his readers.

"Despite having to make more than twice as many tackles as Australia and spending nearly 70% of the match in their own half, New Zealand scored six tries to one and had a seventh disallowed in the final minute. They were some way below their fluent best, hustled into mistakes and forced to bring on replacements early, but only three times had they scored more points against their greatest foes."

Rees pointed to the All Blacks' superior individuals throughout the 37-10 triumph.

"New Zealand are a class apart because they have so many match-winners. Julian Savea spent the opening period looking like a man who had been asked for his ticket at the door of a party and could not find it. He turned gatecrasher after the break, bouncing off challenges from Henry Speight and Nick Frisby to score his second try, his 45th in 49 internationals.

"Dane Coles again played like a three-quarter with the No2 on his back. He was rewarded with his side's final try, which ended a passage of play, lasting more than two minutes.

Rees was another to predict the All Blacks would lengthen their world record streak from here.

"The All Blacks march on, fallible for sure, but buoyed by the self-assurance greatness bestows. The best, it is hard not to suspect, is yet to come," he wrote.

Steve James writing in the English Daily Telegraph was more critical, acknowledging the All Blacks were way ahead of the rest of the world but that the record-breaking win was hardly vintage.

"That might sound strange to say that when they won 37-10, and maybe that is because they have set such phenomenally high standards recently, but the clue was there in the team's reaction when the final whistle blew," he wrote.

"They did not celebrate raucously. They knew that the occasion had affected them and that they had not been anywhere near their clinical best."

James also contested the claim this is the greatest ever All Blacks side.

"Casting them as the greatest side ever is difficult after such a disjointed and imprecise performance. And anyway that is a tricky observation because it has not been one side that has achieved the record, but rather two; this one now and the one that won last year's Rugby World Cup, with all its legends. I would still rather back the RWC team in a pressure match.

"And the 1987 All Blacks, the World Cup winners, with a back row from the heavens in Alan Whetton, Michael Jones and Buck Shelford, are the still the best side ever for me.

"That said, we saw enough of the real All Blacks to know that this side are still way ahead of the rest of the world and that they will continue to move upwards. Their fitness in the last quarter yet again proved irresistible."

The Daily Mail, the world's biggest news website, described the match as "easily New Zealand's most difficult test of a hugely dominant southern hemisphere winter".

"A physical Australian outfit managed to un-nerve the world champions, and controlled possession for large parts of the second half, but typically clinical finishing from the hosts proved the difference," wrote the outlet.

ESPN's specialist rugby site Scrum.com made much of the controversial TMO ruling that denied Wallaby Henry Speight a crucial try, saying it "tainted" the All Blacks' win.

But Australian writer Sam Bruce acknowledged the All Blacks' superiority.

"Like many of the All Blacks' wins this season, Saturday night's triumph was achieved through a determined defence and an innate ability to strike when the opportunity presented," he wrote.

"This record-setting run has produced some of the most scintillating play the sport has ever seen and reminded everyone that when rugby is played with such speed, power, skill and guile, there is no other game like it."

"What we have seen from this great team since the turn of the decade has been nothing short of extraordinary; two World Cup wins, a Bledisloe run which will extend to a 15th year, three Rugby Championship titles and victories all over the globe, all the while doing it in a style that doesn't just make fans want to return, but demands it.

"That we remember the All Blacks' winning streak in its entirety and not their 18th victory in isolation is perhaps the best avenue for history.

"Just don't expect Henry Speight and the Wallabies to buy into that policy."

Another specialist global rugby website, PlanetRugby.com, noted the tenacity of Kieran Read's team.

"In classic All Black fashion, they pulled their performance together in the second-half, turning a fairly close game into a blow-out," wrote the site's reporter.

South African website IOL said "New Zealand were challenged for 50 minutes but still ran in six tries".

The English Guardian dismissed Cheika's outburst as an "extraordinary rant" before then quoting Steve Hansen saying: "It (match coverage) shouldn't get hijacked tonight. What happened tonight is a really good Test match between two good teams, some great rugby played and it was a good advert for the game."