All Blacks: Kieran Read's menacing presence a welcome sight

Kieran Read on the charge against Canada. Photo / Mark Mitchell

After weeks on the sideline All Black Kieran Read returned to action with a gentle purr yesterday at the Rugby World Cup rather than a full-noise roar.

He left the scene after 50 minutes as planned, his engine having been given the gentle tune up it required. There is a select group of footballers who can endure an injury-enforced rehabilitation period of weeks, months even, and return almost immediately in top form.

Read is one of them and he did enough against Canada to be confident he can slam the stick back this Sunday and play in top gear for 80 minutes. And he's going to need to.

As of this week everything changes. The intensity climbs, the physicality goes off the scale and tension creeps into every waking part of the game.

There's also been a sense of the All Blacks not quite being at their dynamic best without him. There was an impressive performance against France and flashes of quality in the other three pool games, but the flow, the drive, the relentless tempo hasn't been evident without Read.

And what has already been a loose forwards' World Cup will become even more so in the knockout rounds; the breakdown will be ferocious - teams will barely have a split second to secure possession.

The All Blacks need Read at his best. They have missed his direct power in this tournament; that ability of his to command the back of the scrum and give the All Blacks stability.

That was the strongest part of his game yesterday - the way he closed down the space around the fringes and drove into it. On the charge he's a handful - a hard man to put down - and he presents the ball beyond the advantage line; an invaluable skill when it comes to pressure rugby.

What everyone will be looking for against Argentina is Read's wider game to be more prominent. With his lungs clearly feeling the bite, he wasn't able to roam and carry in the far reaches. He used his instincts to head towards the right positions, but the engine couldn't quite take him there.

Another hard week at training and the magnitude of the occasion should bring him up to full blast, and yesterday's man of the match Jerome Kaino was relishing the prospect of forming a loose trio with Read and Richie McCaw.

Those three have established themselves as possibly the best back-row combination in world rugby but haven't started a test together since the All Blacks crushed the Wallabies at Eden Park in early August.

"It was awesome to have Reado back," said Kaino. "We are just waiting to get the skip back and have the trio back next week so it will be all hands on deck.

"It's good timing that all of us are fighting fit for the knock-out stages. We still have a lot of work to do but it is great that we are starting to hit our straps at the right time."

Argentina, despite their difficulties in beating Georgia yesterday, have one of the better, tighter loose trios in the world game. Ably supported by two bruising, mobile locks, the Pumas are not a soft touch. The fabled All Black trio and Read in particular won't have any choice - they will have to deliver high quality work for 80 minutes.

"They [Argentina] have a great defensive structure," says Kaino. "We saw in their opening game against England they defended really well and against Scotland as well.

"I think they will be well drilled, they like to scrummage and the set-piece is a really dominant part of their game. We saw in the ... game against Scotland that their backs can score from anywhere. They are dangerous and we have to be on our game."