Wallabies future looking All Black | Thebigtip

By Greg Growden from smh.com.au

SENIOR All Blacks players are relishing the chance to bury the Wallabies in Christchurch on Saturday night to ensure they retain the Bledisloe Cup for an eighth straight year and reclaim the Tri Nations trophy from the Springboks.

Both contests will be all but over if the All Blacks can repeat the form that crushed the Wallabies in Melbourne on Saturday night in next weekend's Test at AMI Stadium.

And it was patently clear among the All Blacks' key players that they aren't about to give Robbie Deans a happy homecoming on his first official visit to his home city as Wallabies coach. They intend to take full advantage of the physical and psychological scars inflicted on the visitors by their comprehensive Etihad Stadium victory.

Although the Wallabies yesterday tried to gain mileage out of the fact they constantly threatened the All Blacks in the second half, the brutal fact was the Test was long gone by then. Even the All Blacks were miffed by how they dropped their standards in the final half-hour and vowed it would not happen again, especially in Christchurch.

Fullback Mils Muliaina, who scored two of the seven All Blacks tries, said the players believed the Wallabies were ''on the ropes''.

''Definitely the way we played tonight, we've got that edge now,'' Muliaina said. ''We take some confidence from tonight, but we know after seeing how they played with 14 men, that they can come back and attack from the fringes. But any day you score seven tries against the Wallabies, you have to be pleased with that. And looking at next week, it's nice to know that we still have a little more we can give. We didn't get the execution right in certain things, but hopefully next week we have a big opportunity to get that right.''

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