Right. I'm absolutely knackered from a combination of Club Grand Final celebrations, watching rugby late, and post-Club Grand Final celebrations, so I'll keep it short. I said in the last article that the Wallabies are usually average in the pool stages - in fact you could say we put the "poo" in "pool". It appears little has changed.

The bad things are starting to gnaw at me. The scrum rulings we're getting against us are flip of coin stuff, and the opposition are getting a free pick at heads first. On a coupe of them we pushed early and got done. Then the Welsh didn't take the weight and we still got done. No logic there. In the second half we didn't attack the ruck as much, and we sat back and let them dictate terms rather than continuing the smashing we handed out over the first 40. Drew Mitchell continues to be a source of angst - has now learned to catch, but still can't bloody tackle!

Seeing Berrick Barnes in his second Test, running things well from flyhalf was encouraging. The kid has the skills but needs the experience and with Gregan standing next to him he can at least siphon off some of the residue. The little general himself was in puissant form, and despite me half-rating Peel the younger bloke just wasn't on the park.

Sharpe had a good game, which means he's due for some utter crap in weeks to come, and that's bad news for a squad whose coach has a stiffy for the guy. I sincerely hope we'll give some game time to the other blokes against Fiji so that everyone has had a run. It was clear when Waugh came on in the second half that he was stuffed after a few minutes. We knew the strategy was to warm up on Japan and then hit wales hard. I hope our remaining two pool matches are a mix of keeping guys ready and making sure we've got cover. Though with England or Samoa the likely opposition, maybe we can put in place a plan to treat the QF like a fifth pool game. Sound arrogant? Maybe, but jeez have a look...

And then we have Latham. The guy is a freak. You could almost have picked him for MOTM from the get-go, but that try - yet again an individual effort to crash over at Cardiff Arms Park - was the icing on a very freakish cake. While I never rated him until Burke finally left, he's really proving me wrong, and good on him. Shame neither winger can take his cue.

Up front the flank combination of Elsom and Smith is really coming into its own, while Palu upped his workrate on the day to provide good ball running. Even Dunning got involved with the pickup and pop to Gregan for Morty's try. Captain Insano did his elbow but also put two of the boyo centres away with hard tackles, and I couldn't help but flip the bird at the TV when Gareth Thomas was one of them. Give and take is a funny thing eh?

I've only watched the game live and might even change my opinion after a second viewing, but it appeared that Knuckles' assessment of "satisfactory" was right. There is a long way to go before this team can close out a game against rampaging dual favourites South Africa and New Zealand.