Peter Bills: All Black tide threatens to swamp the rugby-playing world

Just as long as New Zealand goes on winning test matches despite selecting a series of makeshift teams in a period of blatant reconstruction, so the conviction grows that most of the rest of the rugby-playing world just can't cut the mustard at the moment.

South Africa joined the likes of Australia, Ireland, France, England and Wales as victims of this All Black tide that threatens to engulf the world game and expose its gross deficiencies. Maybe Australia in Brisbane this Saturday will be different.

That Graham Henry's latest All Blacks XV was a league below its true potential at Wellington's Westpac Stadium on Saturday night was undeniable. Yet combinations which were inevitably rusty, or hitherto unknown, were no barrier to a comfortable victory over the 2004 Tri-Nations champions.

Alas for Springbok coach Jake White, his fortunes have plummeted while the New Zealanders' have risen. That gap epitomises the difference between New Zealand and everyone else in the rugby world.

If you deny it, if you focus too long on the ordinary aspects of the All Blacks' game on Saturday, how do you explain the fact that the likes of Aaron Mauger, Conrad Smith, Byron Kelleher, Tony Woodcock, Keven Mealamu, Rico Gear and Sitiveni Sivivatu are still to come? And despite the All Black coaching management's shrewd intention to develop a true 30-man squad for the World Cup, who can say, hand on heart, that every one of those players would not feature should New Zealand reach a World Cup final?

In other words, New Zealand beat South Africa with half a team missing. You could argue the Springboks were similarly weakened without players like Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger, Jean de Villiers, Ashwin Willemse and Marius Joubert. But the outcome was apparent to all. New Zealand's far greater strength in depth is taking them beyond the range of the other teams around the globe.

Of course, it was an ordinary test match because of so much absent quality. The New Zealand backline never purred without the influential Mauger. There wasn't the same zip, dynamism and forward penetration in the absence of Mealamu nor the scrummaging destruction without Woodcock. Mind you, the most revealing moment of the night's front-row battle was when veteran Springbok prop Os du Randt had to be temporarily replaced. The South African scrum promptly went back as fast and as farcically as the images on a videotape being rewound.

Rugby matches can be won in a variety of ways, including through the charitable donation of the opposition. The Springboks were so crassly indisciplined at the breakdown, so riddled with technical errors and so punished by French referee Joel Jutge that the match was solemnly presented to New Zealand.

All it needed was the world's best goalkicker to swing his boot with the kind of assured rhythm and precision that was generally missing from his team. He did so with poise, nailing the penalty goals like an undertaker sealing a coffin.

Not content with giving Daniel Carter the opportunity to kick them to defeat, South Africa also put New Zealand on track for their two tries, by missing touch kicks from defence.

Players like Carter, Rodney So'oialo and Richie McCaw stood up to be counted amidst the general mediocrity, so that there was never the slightest chance their team would fall.

Had Percy Montgomery kicked his goals it might have made a slight difference. But apart from Breyton Paulse's cleverly worked try, South Africa didn't really create anything of significant danger going forward.

They tackled and defended bravely, none more so than the excellent Juan Smith and Wynand Olivier. But modern rugby normally requires some invention, some craft going forward to unlock defences.

New Zealand's patchwork team were just fortunate that they didn't need much of that, such was the steady stream of gifts coming their way from the other side.

For the All Blacks there is an awful lot more to come. As for the South Africans, perhaps Albert Einstein's quote suits best. "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."