The Wallabies frontrow received a timely confidence boost before Saturday's Bledisloe Cup rugby clash at Stadium Australia - from their opposition.

All Blacks hard men Carl Hoeft and Anton Oliver came to the defence of the Australians, saying they had admirably filled the big shoes left behind by hooker Phil Kearns and tighthead prop Andrew Blades who retired after the 1999 World Cup.

Oliver said hooker Michael Foley and prop Fletcher Dyson had coped with the pressure with ease to effectively complement New South Wales loosehead Richard Harry.

"At this stage losing Kearns and Blades hasn't had any affect," Oliver said. "They've come through two rigorous sessions with the Argentinians who are historically known as the best scrummagers in the world and they did really well against the Springboks last week."
Loosehead Hoeft agreed, saying the Australians were a strong unit.

"I marked Fletcher Dyson in the first game of Super 12 and he's a solid prop and a good scrummager," Hoeft said. "Foley is good alongside him and put big Richard Harry there and they're pretty formidable.

"We'll just be going out to try and get our sides up. It'll be a good competition against them."

Hoeft said the scrum was still a critical part of the game even though there were a lot fewer of them now.

"If you're getting on top of someone in the scrum you've got a psychological edge on them, and they know that. There are definitely a lot less scrums so you have to put everything into each one."

Hoeft revealed the All Blacks had put a lot less time into scrummaging at practice this year.

"We haven't been so far but we're going for more quality rather than slogging out 50 or 60," he said. "We're going for half that number and getting everything right.

"At the beginning of the season you still whack out 50 to get off on the right foot."

Hoeft said he wanted to improve on his record of one win and three losses against Australia.

"Scotland were very hard, they were big men. But this is what we'll be judged on," he said. "When it comes down to it we're judged on how we go against Australia and South Africa."

An unflattering statistic shows Hoeft and Oliver have the worst winning percentage with the All Blacks side -- 62.5 per cent (10 wins from 16 Tests) and 63.64 per cent (14 from 22) respectively.

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