But if you thought this was the World Cup comedown from hell, stop reading.

Analyst and commentator Rod Kafer is predicting Australia will not only lose Saturday's dead rubber, but also all three Tests against New Zealand this year. That's the Bledisloe Cup gone for the 13th year.

"I think we're a fair way off the pace there," former Wallaby Kafer says. "I don't think the All Blacks are as good as they were last year but I'm convinced that we're certainly not. They'll win the series 3-0."

It is a surprisingly negative outlook, given the Wallabies played in a World Cup final last year and boast as their coach the only man to win both a European Rugby Champions Cup and Super Rugby title.

Surely the disastrous outings of the past two weeks are down to growing pains, new-season cobwebs or the traditional post-World Cup slump. This was the year Australia would kick on, not lose two on the trot to England. Are the Wallabies broken or are just a few minor repairs needed before the Rugby Championship starts in August?

"I think those games [against England] are an accurate reflection of where we are," Kafer says, blaming a freakish run at the World Cup for setting impossibly high expectations.

"It left us with an over-inflated sense of our capabilities. If we hadn't been given that penalty, hadn't kicked it and hadn't won, we'd be bundled out in the quarter-finals by Scotland and it would have been a disaster. But the team went on, played well and were comfortably beaten in the final. We played beyond our own expectations and I don't think you can do that for long periods of time. When the gloss comes off that, as it has to, we are where we are."

Which is selection limbo, by the way.

Michael Cheika named his third different second row pairing in Sydney this week, hoping someone, at some point, will stake a claim. With much of the Wallabies attack launched off their lineout, it is an urgent question. Rob Simmons and Will Skelton will start, while Western Force lock Adam Coleman, debuting off the bench, will be the seventh second rower Cheika has used in the series.

"I don't think he knows who his best locks are, by any stretch of the imagination," commentator and former Test second rower Nathan Sharpe says. "Without a doubt he's testing the waters and he wants to find out sooner rather than later because he's got a couple of big All Blacks Tests coming up."

The second row is for starters. Tighthead prop, No.8, wing and inside centre are all problem areas.

"They are all key and core positions and without certainty about who our long-term guys are, you end up with what we've got at the moment, which is experimentation in core positions," Kafer says.

"Coming up against the best team in the world is  not the time to be unsure in selection."

Matt Toomua returns from injury to wear the No.12 jersey this weekend, and Matt Giteau is expected to fly home and back into Toomua's shoes in time for the Rugby Championship. Sharpe says as tempting as that is in the age of the Giteau Law, picking a 33-year-old is not planning for the future.

"Everyone talks about 'let's get Matt Giteau back and all the cattle from up north', but the reality of that is how much longer are 'Gits' and Adam Ashley-Cooper going to keep coming back to Australia," Sharpe says.

"They have to develop their own senior playing group and not rely on those coming back to town. There's no doubt that the game management of Matt Giteau would have made a big difference on the weekend, but there's got to be someone else in that team who can step up and fill that role too."

Cheika and attack coach Stephen Larkham have been widely criticised for naivety in the Wallabies play or, at the very least, a lack of variety. Cheika has rejected the pragmatism that is working so well for Eddie Jones and England, standing by the Wallabies' high-risk, high-reward style. But while it is conceivable that England will get less and less pay from their simpler style next season, as rivals find ways to punch through 15-man defensive lines, that will not help the Wallabies beat the All Blacks.

"[Australia] were guilty of running some very basic running lines, it looked like a one-out bash fest," Sharpe says. "The Wallabies don't operate at their peak when they're playing like that."

Kafer believes it has not helped that Cheika's assistant coaches, Larkham and Nathan Grey, have been allowed to juggle Wallabies duties with their provincial roles. "It is a weakness in our system at the moment, Cheika needs full-time resourcing. It can change and it will change, but these things have impacted the performance of the team this year."

As Cheika said on Thursday, the Wallabies are down but they are not about to be counted out. Sharpe agrees: "Sport is like life, you have your hard moments that you learn a lot from and your good moments that you treasure," he says. "The adversity that they're going to go through is going to stand them in good stead. Michael Cheika will be able to use the difficult times and moments to spur them on to bigger things."

Twitter: @geerob