New Zealand 91 Fiji 0: The exchange of the pre-match "challenges" - the haka and the cibi - was about as competitive as it got in Albany last night. Thereafter the All Blacks upped their average of 71 points per match in three previous meetings with the Fijians, easily setting a record against their little island neighbours with a 15-try rout.
With Aaron Mauger showing all the accuracy off the tee of a scattergun, about the only blot was the goalkicking, with the All Blacks landing only eight conversions.
The All Blacks looked awesome, blooded five new players and tried lots of new combinations without showing much of a hand to the Lions, but how useful this facile exercise was is moot.
The Fijians are notoriously poor travellers and were overawed almost from the opening whistle, giving up what little fight they had by the end of the first quarter.
The Maoris will be pumped up for the Lions today, but even allowing for Fiji's home crowd, a rock-hard pitch and temperatures of up to 38 degrees last week in Suva, it does rather put their two-point defeat to the Maoris into perspective.
Henry praised all his players for their skill levels and intensity, but readily agreed the All Blacks would have preferred a harder test. "We all know what we're in for, and that it will be a major international series."
The All Blacks will announce their 26-man squad for the series tomorrow morning at 10am local time (11.0 this evening Irish time) and Henry said: "It will be a really difficult selection, but it's good the selectors have been put under pressure. All the guys put their hands up tonight and they couldn't have done any more."
His counterpart, Wayne Pivac, admitted this Test "amounted to no more than a training run for the All Blacks", and said, "It showed the gulf between the top-class nations and the tier-two nations."
Two weeks before their opening World Cup qualifier against Tonga, Pivac lamented the standard of domestic Fijian forward play and the stark contrast in fitness levels in this chastening experience.
It's something of a scandal that the All Blacks have deigned to play the forever cash-strapped Polynesian islanders only three times to date and, needless to say, never once in Fiji. Then again, you wanted this mismatch to end long before half-time.
In some mitigation of the New Zealand union, the first NZ$100,000 profit from the game was being donated to their Fijian counterparts. But a more telling barometer of the rugby relationship between the two countries is that the All Blacks' sensational performer was their Fijian born and reared left-winger Sitiveni Sivivatu, who became the first All Black to score four tries on his debut.
Had he been watching in Paris from the IRB Sevens series, his cousin and fellow Fijian Joe Rokocoko could only have looked on enviously, and the thought occurred if Henry wanted Rokocoko to fill his hat with tries and revive his self-confidence, this was the place to do it.
Sivivatu has to play against the Lions, and as an aside, Doug Howlett increasingly begins to look more like his old self; sliding in for a couple of smartly taken trademark tries to take his tally to 36 in 46 Test matches.
The charity didn't extend to the pitch, naturally, for the privilege of pulling on an All Black jersey does not permit any slackening off and the home side ruthlessly maintained their hunger for work and tries.
No one better typified the way they bossed the physical collisions than Jerry Collins. With his team leading 64-0 eight minutes into the second half, Collins was denied a try by the TMO (television match official) because of the pile-up of bodies and could be seen cursing when the verdict was passed. Needless to say, the All Black scrum duly scored a pushover try anyway.
The contest had long ceased by then. By the end, of the first half that is, the Fijians weren't so much falling off tackles (18 missed tackles by the break and ultimately 41 in total) as avoiding them. They stopped trying to push up and crowd the space, allowing Byron Kelleher all the time he wanted to roam across the pitch before seeking out the queues of willing target runners.
As expected, the All Blacks think-tank moved regular fullback Mils Muliaina to outside centre to accommodate the introduction of pacy new fullback Sosene Anesi, shifting Tana Umaga and Mauger along the line. Quite what they could have learned from this at that juncture, given they'd already racked up half a century, was debatable.
SCORING SEQUENCE: 5 mins: Carter try, con 7-0; 14: Howlett try, Carter con 14-0; 17: Sivivatu try, Carter con 21-0; 21: Umaga try 26-0; 28: Somerville try 31-0; 32: Umaga try, Carter con 38-0; 35: Sivivatu try 43-0; 37: Mauger try, Carter con 50-0; (half-time 50-0); 43: Sivivatu try, Mauger con 57-0; 46: Williams try, Mauger con 64-0; 49: So'oialo try 69-0; 58: Howlett try 74-0; 64: Mealamu try, Mauger con 81-0; 70: Sivivatu try 86-0; 74: Muliaina try 91-0.
ALL BLACKS: M Muliaina; D Howlett, T Umaga (capt), A Mauger, S Sivivatu; D Carter, B Kelleher; T Woodcock, D Witcombe, G Somerville; J Ryan, A Williams; J Collins, R McCaw, R So'oialo. Replacements: M Tuiali'I for McCaw, S Anesi for Carter (both half-time), K Mealamu for Witcombe (49 mins), C Johnstone for Woodcock (50 mins), J Marshall for Kelleher (54 mins), C Smith for Umaga (55 mins), C Jack for Williams (58 mins).
FIJI: N Ligairi; V Delasau, V Satala, S Bai, S Bobo; N Little, M Rauluni (capt); J Bale, V Gadolo, B Cavubati; A Matanibukaca, I Domolai; I Rawaqa, A Ratuva, S Koyamaible. Replacements: S Rokobaro for Domolai (29-36 mins) and for Domolai (47 mins), J Railomo (50 mins), S Tabua for Rawaqa (58 mins), J Raulini for M Raulini (64 mins), J Qova for Satala (63 mins).
Referee: N Whitehouse (Wales).
