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The experts have bagged last weekend's rugby tests around the world, but Star sports editor Nick Tolerton says the All Blacks' performance was a typical season opener. You too can have your say on the state of test rugby by emailing nick.tolerton@starcanterbury.co.nz

Anton Oliver reckons league could be a better spectacle.

Sean Fitzpatrick says he feels more like watching soccer. So what's happening to test rugby?

We're just starting a marathon year which will see the All Blacks play 16 matches, one more than a Super 14 champion has to, if they go all the way in the World Cup.

But already the critics have their knives into the ABs and the whole international format as France Lite and the other second-string northern hemisphere teams amble to New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa where the hosts are on a hiding to nothing.

All Blacks hooker Anton Oliver may have mirrored the feelings of many spectators when he struggled to be enthusiastic during the ABs' 42-11 win over France at Eden Park in their first 2007 hit-out.

It was quite frustrating how both teams dropped the ball, he said.

"It became a stop-start affair and I must admit that watching the scrums being reset over and over again, and I am supposed to like it, is really mundane and a danger for the game.

"It is probably something league has got over us in that it has far more of a continual feel about it."

And All Blacks great Sean Fitzpatrick says he's so disillusioned with international rugby he feels more like watching soccer.

"Club rugby is staging the real contests while international rugby is mucking around with weakened teams and fixtures," he said.

"I find myself thinking I'd rather watch Chelsea or Manchester United.

"Ordinary people like me love rugby and the All Blacks, and we are finding it hard to watch. What must everyone else be thinking?"

Fitzpatrick believes the unrelenting focus on the World Cup to the exclusion of other meaningful test rugby and the growth of the power of the rich northern hemisphere clubs means rugby is heading down the same road as soccer.

"Club rugby will be where the power and credibility is. The international game will be insignificant, except for once every four years at the World Cup."

He blames the International Rugby Board for not acting to stop test rugby being diluted, and said his disillusionment had grown to the extent he struggled to get interested in Saturday's test.