Sideline Sid Sports correspondent & historian www.sunlive.co.nz

Watching the All Blacks demolish the Wallabies on Saturday night from a Australian perspective, was an interesting experience for this long time rugby fanatic.

Free to air on Channel Ten, the game build-up was all about a refreshed Australian side that had learned plenty of lessons from the June series whitewash against England.

Long time Aussie commentator Gordon Bray and his cohorts were predicting a close contest.

As we one know, it was one of the best ever performances from the team in black, with a record score against the green and gold brigade.

The Queensland daily rag ran a piece in Monday's report on the game tabled the "The Woeful Wallabies".

Five straight losses - worst losing streak since 2005. 34 points - biggest losing margin on home soil in 117 years.

Forty points conceded in back to back tests to England and the All Blacks.

The Wallabies walloping continued some tough times for Aussie sport, with the Australian gold medal haul at Rio worse than their mediocre result in London four years ago.

After London, the Australians invested $377 million in the chase for gold in 2016. The end result was ninth on the Rio medal tally with eight gold, with pre-games predictions around three times the final result.

While it has been hard to keep up with the Kiwi results, the final tally of four gold, nine silver and five bronze, surpassed the NZOC predictions of 14 medals.

On a per capita performance, we beat our friends from over the ditch, hands down.

Thank goodness for the internet and SunLive to keep us up-to-date with what's been happening in the Western Bay of Plenty in our absence.

Looks like the Steamers made a relatively good start to their NPC campaign at the Tauranga Domain last weekend.

The SunLive match report suggested while they made a slow start "our" team rattled home against Taranaki.

Another recent article that grabbed my eye was the NZ First tribute to kiwi jockey Bob Skelton, who passed away recently.

RJ Skelton was a maestro in the saddle, riding a myriad of winners in the land of the long white cloud, before relocating to Melbourne 30 odd years ago.

He scaled the highest peak in Australasian racing when he kicked home Van der Hum to win the Melbourne Cup in the late 1970's.

My award for the best Olympic headline in the Courier Mail in the last seven days goes to "Gold - We Don't Understand It, But She Won It".

The headline was about Australian Modern Pentathlon athlete Chloe Esposito, who won an unlikely gold in the swimming, horse riding, fencing, shooting and running event.

The Aussie win caught the most ardent Aussie supporters by complete surprise, as she went from a unknown to Olympic champion in the space of a day.

We managed to catch her win on the Chanel 7 live telecast. Chloe came from a 45 second deficit entering the last leg of running and shooting, to storm home to glory.

With the Olympics over for another four years, we can now turn our attention to the Rugby Championship and next weeks (hopeful) mauling of the Wallabies on our side of the ditch.