Result puts McKenzie on firmer turf BACK in 2009, following an agonising one-point loss to the All Blacks in Sydney, Robbie Deans described his Wallabies as "creeping moss," so slowly were they advancing as a team. They're no longer his team, of course, but there was more an element of noxious weed about the way the Wallabies spread out, overran and ultimately strangled the Pumas at Estadio Gigante de Arroyito yesterday. Agent Orange wouldn't have stopped them. It would have barely slowed them down. The shrinking violets of the All Blacks and Springbok defeats were coming so quickly and aggressively into bloom it almost was as though the match was being filmed by a time-lapse camera, in which the product of days, weeks, months and even years of growth was all being condensed into 80 unforgettable minutes. That, at least, is how it must have seemed to long-suffering Australian rugby followers. For so long their team has plodded and poked around and what modest progress was made in some areas was usually instantly negated by some unaccountable setbacks in others. Wallabies supporters were settling in, reluctantly it would have to be said, for the long wait before their side found its mojo again. It's not in the nature of the team's new boss, Ewen McKenzie, to attempt giant leaps as a coach. He is by nature an incrementalist and it was interesting yesterday, following the Rosario rout, to hear Israel Folau now talking about the Wallabies aiming at two wins in a row. Rewind to McKenzie's first season with Queensland, 2010, and the talk then, with the Reds historically at an all-time low, was of exactly the same thing. Initially the goal was a modest one, back-to-back Super Rugby wins, then three, then four, then records against specific teams. And almost before the Reds knew what had happened, those insignificant steps, taken one after the other and added together, had taken them to the top of the mountain. So it would probably be fair to say McKenzie was taken as much by surprise by the scale of the Wallabies' harvest as everyone else yesterday. Certainly he had prepared the soil for it, planted the seed and dutifully watered it but he wouldn't have been expecting all his prayers to be answered with such speed and alacrity. Granted, this was Argentina, not South Africa, let along New Zealand. But it's crucial, in taking every precaution not to overstate the achievement yesterday in Rosario, nor to understate it. This was, to push the horticultural analogy to shameful extremes, a moss-win game for the Wallabies and for McKenzie in particular. After only one win in his first five Tests as Australian coach, questions were being asked about everything from his game plan to his overall coaching ability. The widespread expectation, from the bookies down, was that the Pumas would scrum the Wallabies into the turf and that McKenzie would finish his debut Rugby Championship with the worst tournament results of any Australian coach since Eddie Jones. The Pumas were coming off a heartening performance against the All Blacks in which they had dominated play for about a 55-minute slab. They had everything to play for in that they'd never beaten one of the southern hemisphere big boys, as Felipe Contepomi phrased it, and it seemed there wasn't a soul in Argentina who didn't believe this was the weekend their team would break through. And let's not forget Contepomi himself. The same match in which he would become the most capped Argentinian player of all time also represented his farewell to Test rugby. The UAR, realising the peso is vanishing before its eyes - inflation here is choofing along at a modest 10.55 per cent, and that's just the official rate; the locals will tell you it is much higher - figured they might as well send it up in smoke by putting on a huge fireworks display at the end of the match in honour of their former captain. Curiously, despite the devastating outcome for them, they went ahead with the pyrotechnics anyhow at the end of play. Not the fireworks the Pumas faithful had come to see. So we've pretty much established this wasn't some dead rubber Test match as far as the locals were concerned. They were expecting and they were preparing for something big. How then did it play out? Rather well, actually - from a Wallabies perspective. Of the 172 Tests Australia has played away from home against Tier One nations going back 108 years to the first meeting with the All Blacks on New Zealand soil in 1905, the Wallabies have never scored more tries than they did yesterday, and only ever once equalled that seven-try blitz, against France in Paris in 2010 at the height of the Deans era. In the 64 years that Argentina has been playing Test rugby, no side has ever scored more points against them on their home soil than the 54 Australia did yesterday. Again, there's an asterisk. The All Blacks also notched 54 points against them last year in La Plata. This is not in any way to insultingly rub Argentinian noses in the result. As McKenzie observed last week, coming to Argentina to play rugby is like going to Ireland - the locals are always so lovely and welcoming that it comes as a brutal shock when they suddenly attack you with pick handles on the rugby pitch on the Saturday, before inevitably reverting to their charming selves the moment the final whistle sounds. No, it's done by way of illustrating that the McKenzie way of playing rugby, with ball-in-hand, can flourish against even the most committed of opponents if the basics are observed - get on the front foot, run straight, offer up attacking alternatives, realign quickly and execute with skill. This was far from a complete display from the Wallabies. It's hard to recall precisely how many tries were squandered by poor passing or poor handling or both, but at a guess, at least four or five. Nor was there consistency across the team. Last week against the Boks, centre Tevita Kuridrani was wonderful, winger Joe Tomane woeful. Yesterday those descriptions needed to be reversed. That's not to say anything beyond the fact that one has played four Tests, the other five. At these early stages of Test careers, form ebbs and flows like a Broome tide. But crucially, McKenzie didn't abandon Tomane to his fate when his form sucked him out to sea against the Boks. He gave him the chance to make amends, just as he surely will with Kuridrani. The players are only now starting to get a handle on McKenzie. Indeed, that applies to the country in general. The way he handled the James O'Connor affair establishes him as a "no-shit" kind of coach. The way he kept the Wallabies building through the Rugby Championship, even when the losses were piling up and critics were taking the cheapest of shots, should excite the curiosity of even the most tepid of Australian rugby follower. Rarely in the history of Australian sport has a major code needed a morale boost like the one McKenzie's men provided yesterday.