They didn’t quite collide with his hairline, although Richie McCaw’s scarred eyebrows still twitched when told his old mentor Robbie Deans had accused the All Blacks’ scrum of “trickery” and manipulation of the referees this week.

Frustrated at what he believes are the whistlers “preconceived ideas” of the Wallabies scrum on their northern hemisphere tour, coach Deans delivered a verbal whack at the officials and then gave the All Blacks a lick too.

After praising his own pack for adapting to an eight-man shove by Italy last weekend, Deans made an accusation about the All Blacks’ set piece tactics that are sure to raise his counterparts’ hackles.

“We came off a fixture against the All Blacks … they don’t scrummage,” Deans claimed. “They just manipulate, they play the referee constantly. It’s all about trickery. Then you get across to the United Kingdom, and they scrummage more so. There are elements of trickery but they do want to go forward with that trickery.”

Having captained the Crusaders under Deans, who very rarely publicly criticised officials or opponents during his nine-year reign as head coach of the franchise, McCaw appeared surprised his old boss had had a flick at the New Zealanders.

“Someone said he has been saying things like that. Perhaps a bit of pressure does that to you, I don’t know,” McCaw mused.

“I think you have seen over the years that we certainly have put a lot of work into it (scrummaging).

“In this part of the world it is a big part of their game too – I don’t know where those comments come from.”

Blindside flanker Jerome Kaino attempted to skirt around the issue by stating the tight five were responsible for answering the questions on the scrum technicalities, although he didn’t think props Tony Woodcock and Owen Franks would have been too thrilled by the remarks.

“I think they would be pretty cut-up about it. They work really hard to make sure that we have the best scrum in the world and cheap shots don’t really help much.”

McCaw added the front rowers may remember the comments for future reference as he acknowledged they don’t easily forget any slights about how they go about their trade.

“Yeah they have (got long memories), but they occasionally they will just grunt and moan and get on with it. To be honest I don’t think they will worry about it too much, but they will probably tuck it away somewhere.”

Ironically, while Deans has been bemoaning his scrum has not been fairly rewarded, the All Blacks believe they have been getting a raw deal whenever they put the shove on during the opposition scrum feed.

Although their own defensive scrum collapsed several times in Dublin, the New Zealanders were miffed referee Marius Jonker did nothing more than repeatedly penalise Ireland when they kept pulling down their scrum during their 38-18 defeat.

Meanwhile, McCaw reckoned the decision to skip Canterbury’s NPC campaign had proved beneficial on this tour.

Although he only made three appearances, including one for the successful Ranfurly Shield challenge against Wellington, last year the All Blacks skipper stated he felt physically fresher.

“You don’t feel it at the time. When you have a rest you feel like you can carry on but it is after five tests in a row that you realise it makes it a lot easier. I look back to this time last year …and by this point I was feeling pretty knackered, whereas I still feel pretty good and looking forward to Saturday.”