Wallabies smash sorry Samoans 74-7

I missed the entire first half of the game because of a nightmare traffic jam that stretched all the way down Homebush Bay Drive through to Ryde Road up past Epping Road - took me an hour and 20mins to get to the stadium. Because they had no buses organised every muppet (including me) decided to drive. It took forever to get there.

By the time I got there the game was gone as a contest. Anyway, on viewing the game again I have these comments:

- Lyndon Bray was crap. His decisions were mystifying at the game and bewildering on my video replay. We were obviously the better team by a mile but his pathetic officiating detracted from our performance. The first yellow card he issued to Brian Lima was harsh, the second yellow to someone else (I forget who) was ridiculous (obviously his justification was that he'd warned the Samoans for slowing it down) and the third was for some offence I couldn't quite work out. His touch judges weren't much help either. In one example George Smith recovered a Matt Henjak kick close to the Samoa tryline with no support, the Samoan tackler got to his feet, Smith had the ball between his legs waiting for the support to arrive and the Samoan got penalised for going over the top - right in front of Bryce Lawrence (a Kiwi touch judge). I felt they were hard done by, even though they did infringe a lot, some of the calls were harsh.

- Matt Giteau had his best game in the No10 jersey, though you need to qualify it by considering the opposition he was up against. He distributed and kicked for the line well, and took the right options most of the time. He got great service from Chris Whitaker, who I seriously think should be picked ahead of George Gregan on form this year (though he won't).

- our set pieces went well, both scrum and lineout. Fatt Matt Dunning had an excellent game against two fatties even fatter than him. Good to know we have decent over and that Big Al Baxter isn't the only decent tighthead in OZ. Some problems from Jeremy Paul with his throwing as usual, but in general was good.

- Samoa's tackling was a joke. Fair enough they were a man down for most of the seconnd half but obviously their fitness levels were shot after 20 mins and they didn't put up much of a contest.

- for an Ozzie team made up of heaps of new blokes they seemed to gel pretty well. Thought Rocky Elsom had a blinder and gave us a great third option in the lineout and did some great support work, one of which resulted in his try. Mark Chisholm did alright for his start as well.

- Back three: bloody Clyde Rathbone got injured again. This bloke's worse than Medicare Mat Rogers! Chris Latham, even though he's a great ballrunner, is still a bloody HOG. He hogs the ball far too much. On three occasions tryscoring opportunities went begging because he hogged the ball. And Wendell Sailor...as I've said before, Dell is a great backrower playing in the No 11 jersey. It's good that he goes chasing for the ball, but he does so even in defence and leaves his wing unguarded! He's certainly hard to stop when he does get the ball, but his body position isn't low enough for mine when he takes it up.

- wasn't it great to see Bernie Larkham back on the paddock. Had a rusty start and gave away a try (I'm sure he wouldn't have done that in a tight Bledisloe game) but towards the end of the game it was nice to see his passes fizzing into space releasing his outsides again. The bloke's got great vision.

- Samoa tried hard but were outclassed. They were never a hope of winning but the scoreline was overly harsh on them - 40 pts was probably a more reasonable margin, rather than 70. Their kicking game was crap and they can't throw into a lineout to save their lives. Some of those throws were so far off the mark it was a joke. Still, the biggest cheer of the game was for the Samoan try.

- Disclaimer: most of the positive comments I made about the OZ need to be taken with many grains of salt due to how poor Samoa was (due in no small part to Lyndon "I Love Samoans So Much I'll Send Them Off For No Reason" Bray)

But it's not a bad start. You can only play what's in front of you and it wasn't the OZ's fault that Bray had a crap game. They took their chances well, as did the AB against Fiji. But I don't think you can read too much into either game.