New Zealand assistant coach Steve Hansen and former All Black prop John Drake have shifted the focus off their own pack by accusing the Australians of cheating in the scrum.

Hansen was of the opinion that Australian scrumhalf Luke Burgess manipulated the ball into the scrum in the Perth Tri-Nations Test against the Springboks last Saturday, which the home team won 16-9.

According to Hansen, Burgess imparted spin onto the ball on delivery into the scrum, so that the ball would effectively spin away from the Bok front row, and result in quick and easy possession for the Wallabies in a set-piece that has in recent years been a weakness of theirs.

"They're clever with the way they do things, you've only got to look at the way the [scrumhalf] puts the ball in," Hansen said.

"They've adapted their scrum to suit the way they play. They don't keep the ball in the scrum for a very long time."

Hansen was asked whether he felt that Burgess did not put the ball in straight, but he shrugged and said: "I'm suggesting you want to look at how he puts it in. How he holds the ball before he puts it in."

It was clear that Hansen was cleverly bringing the issue into the public domain, possibly to alert referee Craig Joubert, who'll be officiating Saturday's Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations match, to the matter.

"It doesn't matter what I think, it matters what the referee thinks," Hansen told NZPA.

"All we can do is control the things that we control, we've got to go out and scrum well ourselves."

Meanwhile, former All Black prop John Drake was far more direct in his criticism of the Australian scrum tactics against the Boks in Perth.

"I can't believe they got away with what they did at scrum time with their technique of entering," Drake told ABC Radio in Australia.

"The biggest thing I probably got out of the Test is the way that they probably cheated at scrum time.

"They pack very high, similar to what the Crusaders and the All Blacks did about three years ago," he said.

"When they say crouch, they're still high so the other team has to try and come up to them.

"It kind of puts them off, and then the Australians just dive straight down. I was pretty annoyed with that."

Ironically, New Zealand were accused off illegal scrumming themselves by Springbok coach Peter de Villiers after the first Tri-Nations Test in Wellington.

The accusation kicked off a heated war of words between the two camps in the week leading up to South Africa's 30-28 victory over their traditional rivals in Dunedin in the second Tri-Nations Test.

365