You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief when the relentless Springboks left New Zealand. A week's breather and then on to the Wallabies - that mob on the other side of the ditch who don't have a scrum.
That's a fair point. But they do have a lineout . . . and a bit more to boot.
They might not be world champions but don't expect the Wallabies to be any easier than the Boks when the All Blacks line up against them in Sydney on Saturday.
It seems that for every plus there's a negative when you stack the sides against each other. They tend to cancel each other out.
Take a quick skim through the positions for proof.
Front row: New Zealand can rightly claim an advantage here in the set-piece.
Second row: Definitely a lineout edge to Australia and pretty even around the paddock.
Back row: With Richie McCaw absent, the Aussies have an advantage at No 7 and the two other positions are up for debate. As a unit it could be home advantage.
Halfback: Two young players finding their way in the test scene.
First-five: Dan Carter has a nose in front of Matt Giteau.
Second-five: Another couple of players trying to stamp their mark on the position but Ma'a Nonu's power will be a handful for Berrick Barnes.
Centre: Stirling Mortlock is always a thorn in the All Blacks and this is a position New Zealand is still trying to solidify.
Wings: Sitiveni Sivivatu and Lote Tuqiri cancel each other out and it's a coin toss between whoever is running down the other touchline at the moment.
Fullback: The All Blacks will claim this position with either Mils Muliaina or Leon MacDonald.
Bring in other qualities like goal kicking, field kicking, defensive steel and attacking threats and you could also throw a blanket over the two teams.
But then it starts to get uneasy.
The All Blacks management are open in their admiration for the general intelligence of Australian players. You can add mental fortitude into that equation, as many All Blacks sides over the past decade have discovered.
The Wallabies have developed a knack of winning the tight contests.
Then there is the Sydney factor.
The city has been a graveyard for All Blacks teams since the game went professional.
The All Blacks have played Australia nine times there since 1996, losing on six occasions including the 2003 World Cup semifinal.
Australian soil has also put a dent in Graham Henry's impressive win-loss ratios. He has a win and a loss in Sydney and overall has two wins and two losses across the Tasman over the past four years.
Henry's last match in charge there was the 20-15 loss in Melbourne last year, a defeat that should have provided some lessons for the 2007 World Cup campaign.
It didn't and now the All Blacks join the Wallabies in trying to recover from the embarrassment of being tagged world cup quarter-finalists.
Of course, the backdrop to this intriguing match lies with the respective coaches. Rightly or wrongly, New Zealand delivered Robbie Deans to the Wallabies on a plate with their decision to stick with Henry.
Deans may be a novice as a head coach at test level but he is in his prime and has far more first-hand knowledge of the new laws than Henry and his assistants can muster as a group.
There's an argument that he might just have more knowledge about some key All Blacks than the New Zealand management as well through his long stint with the Crusaders.
Deans will certainly provide better applications of the new laws than the Boks brought with their blunt approach.
He will also present a far bigger personal challenge to Henry than anything a tired Eddie Jones or an outdated John Connolly could muster over the past four years.
The Deans factor will only grow with time as he settles in across there. Henry will know that for personal satisfaction and for the sake of the defence of the Tri Nations title he must strike now.
How he achieves that is another matter. The gloss of the first four wins of the year was dimmed by last week's loss to a 14-man South African side that overhauled the All Blacks at the end.
Henry spun the result as a learning experience. But being the first All Blacks team to lose to the Boks in Dunedin and the first to lose to them in New Zealand in 10 years are black marks nevertheless. The performance also raised selection and tactical question marks - the make-up of the front and back rows, the back-ups in the second row, the effectiveness of the wings and attacking verve of the backline in general which failed to penetrate the Boks in two tests.
Henry has been spoilt for choice up until this season. Now he isn't and how he and his side respond will be fascinating.
The remarkable fortitude he showed in the boardroom now needs to be transferred to his team's performance on the field in these top-drawer tests.
The Springboks may be the All Blacks' fiercest rival through the history of test rugby but the Wallabies have been our most problematic in recent times. That certainly doesn't look like it will change in Sydney next Saturday.
