Really, after a miracle escape against Ireland?
Aussie took Ireland apart, and made Ireland look like a bunch of amateurs.
Ireland then played us and spent large parts of the game making us look ordinary at best.
This is a very fine team but until it has Kaino back in it and he's on form then it can't possibly be considered for best AB team of all time.
Messam is a fine player but when Kaino returns to form and full fitness Messam will be warming the bench.
Dan Coles looks like a school kid and I'm scared he will get hurt by that towering behemoth Du Plessis. The pressure is on Coles now that he can't hide for the first 60 minutes behind Andrew Hore.
To be fair, this year, only the Boks looked like a team that could give us the full measure of a test and beat us.
It's not that we were great, it's just that were great in rare moments when it really counted. Apart from the Boks every other team seemed to be below par. Hey, you can only beat what is put in front of you but this year I think we got off lightly.
Aussie were very ordinary in the RC, England were average by their standards at home, the French are still too early in their managers tenure to be a settled line up. Argentina are a strong pack but a regular back line.
It was a good year for the chance to go through unbeaten and apart from the two games against the Boks which were very tough games, and the tired looking performance (very shabby first half) against the Irish, the rest of the games did not see a severely tested AB team.
1987 team rates above this one.