Rating ABs tough when the opposition?s so poor

The All Blacks are becoming a nightmare for us media hacks.
Despite having lost just the one test so far this season it's still impossible to say exactly how good they are.
Normally you'd rate any ABs side which demolished a Lions team 3-0 as being something special.
As you would any ABs line-up which ran up 30-plus unanswered points against the Aussies on home turf , especially after they were trailing by 13 points at one stage.
Problem is the first question you have to ask when making such an assessment is how good were the Lions and how good were the Aussies?
And on both counts you'd have to suggest they were ordinary?probably even worse than that.
The Lions are, of course, pretty much past history so any further mention of their inadequacies would be just a matter of going over old ground.
But it wasn't until Saturday that the deficiencies of the Aussies became so painfully obvious.
Their problems appear to be two fold.
Firstly they simply don't have the depth in their playing resources to be able to adequately replace injured stars like mercurial first five Stephen Larkham.
His absence meant the transferring of another of their stars in Matt Giteau from midfield to the pivotal role and while he is undoubtedly a huge talent he was never going to be as effective there.
Secondly, the Aussies have a fair number of players who may well be past their use by date.
Players like Young, Smith, Gregan and Mortlock.
Sure, they may be the best their country has in their positions but, internationally, you have to wonder whether they still have the speed in their legs and the fire in their bellies to be the nuisance value they were a season or two ago.
Gregan is a prime example.
The rugby world knows him as not only one of the quickest passers in the game but an astute tactician to boot.
A player who was always willing to lend the referee a hand in how things should be controlled.
Well, Gregan looked only a patch of his former self in Sydney, There were times when he seemed barely able to keep up and he was almost in surrender mode come the middle stages of the second spell. Very, very un-Gregan like that is.
Australian teams in any sport can never be lightly dismissed because defeat is something which invariably brings out the best in them, and their rugby side is certainly no exception in that regard.
That being the case it would be folly to already rate them as the 'easy beats" of the current Tri Nations series but at the same time it's difficult to see them climbing off the ropes quickly enough to trouble either the AB's or the Springboks on the points table.
So to get back to our original question, how do you rate the AB's?.
If you don't count the Lions or the Aussies as being barometers then that leaves the Springboks and we all know what happened when we met them a couple of weeks back.
But there too you could fairly argue that the AB's loss was more about them having an off day then the Springboks having any form of superiority over them.
Perhaps then we have to simply acknowledge that it is still very much a case of 'wait and see".
And be happy that on a win-loss basis at least we're looking as healthy as anyone.