That's partly because the former All Black and super-successful Canterbury Crusaders mentor came to the job in 2008 when the cupboard was somewhat bare in terms of new talent on and off the field.

But also, Deans was quick to make positive changes. He injected fresh talent in the Wallaby squad and advocated an attractive brand of rugby. The Wallabies responded in 2008 by accounting for Ireland and France, then registering wins against the Springboks and the All Blacks in successive matches.

However after that hot start, things have cooled considerably. ‘Dingo' Deans oversaw Australia's worst defeat, a 53-8 hammering by the Springboks in Johannesburg in August 2008 and last year's Tri-Nations was an unqualified disaster with the Wallabies completely losing their way, winning just one of six Tests.

Redemption could have been theirs on the end of year tour of Ireland and Britain but sandwiched between a few ordinary performances and one good one, they managed to lose to Scotland. That's SCOTLAND! Not quite a hanging offence, but it certainly makes the honeymoon a whole lot less sexy.

In fact, Deans has a pretty miserable record overall with 17 wins in 30 Test outings (56.7 percent). Admittedly it's with a squad going through a necessary, extended rebuilding phase, but into his third season in charge it's time to look at the statistics and hold somebody accountable.

Deans is contracted until after next year's World Cup and, of course, if Australia wins the whole shebang, all will be forgiven. Nevertheless, anything less than a 50 per cent improvement in results and performance in 2010 will give his patient critics a mandate to whine loudly and possibly unsettle the Wallaby caravan.

That's not to take anything away from Deans' impressive efforts to build the depth of the national squad. In the first squad he selected in June 2008, he included seven uncapped players - Luke Burgess, Dean Mumm, Lachie Turner, Ryan Cross, Richard Brown, Peter Hynes and Ben Alexander.

Arguably all of those players have since justified selection, although Burgess only really excelled for the first time this year, against England in the first Test and Turner needs to improve his work-rate (and stop kicking mindlessly) if he is to become a regular in the national team.

In total 13 new players became part of the Wallabies in Deans' first year and that trend continued last year.

Notable successes have been Matt Hodgson, David Pocock and James O'Connor, while Will Genia and Benn Robinson have flourished under his watch. Quade Cooper's success this season was on the back of his forcing his way into the national side during the Ireland-Britain tour and Kurtley Beale is finding his feet.

But there have been a few conspicuous failures and a couple of questionable personnel decisions that have taken a gloss off the development process.

A few bolters in the Grand Slam tour squad, Richard Kingi and Dave Dennis, are still very much works in progress and Mitchell Chapman has failed to fire this season despite Deans' faith in the Brumbies flanker/lock. Pek Cowan is another Deans project, but he gets a ‘C' at best.

Stirling Mortlock's season was curtailed by injury, which may be a good thing as Deans held on to the veteran for perhaps a little longer than he should. On the other hand, Phil Waugh has been pretty much thrown on the scrapheap, even though he is a brave and valuable rugby commodity on any team.

But perhaps the most impactful selection decision Deans has made is the discarding of Al Baxter. You get the feeling Dingo would wipe Baxter's name out of the history books if he could.

Whether you agree or not with Deans' policy of sticking with the young front row so comprehensively dismantled by the English in Perth for the second Test in Sydney this weekend, it's hard to fathom why Baxter has been treated like he has leprosy.

Matt Dunning is another prop on the outer, but the big fella wasn't at his best in the Super 14 and simply doesn't deserve consideration.

Baxter, the Brits like to remind us was taken apart by England and others, especially early in his career. But over the last two seasons he returned the favour, with interest on several occasions. What's more, he probably had his best-ever season in the Super 14 this year going boofhead to boofhead with those huge bastards from South Africa and our angry cousins in New Zealand.

Baxter's greatest sin is he's a target for refs. In the last of his record 69 Tests he was unceremoniously hauled off by Deans after just 30 minutes having attracted the ire of referee Jonathan Kaplan. Deans dumped Baxter in the ‘too hard' basket and he has remained there since, from a national perspective.

One theory is Baxter brings attention to himself in the scrum by continually collapsing. That's patently wrong.

For all their ugly faults this year - and God knows there were an infuriating bunch of them - New South Wales had the best scrum in the country and arguably one of the most impactful in the Super 14. Anchoring that bad puppy: The Fuse.

When he's part of a dominant tight five, the refs treat him like every other mindless prop. But slip Baxter into a struggling tight five and somehow the whistle goes straight to the mouth and the finger is pointed directly towards Baxter.

Hey, refs read the papers - even that confused jibber from the Brits and humourless drivel from the Saffers -- and talk amongst themselves. The Baxter of the ‘bad old days' - Jones era especially - when trickery rather than power was part of the Australian way in scrums, remains a vivid memory for the adjudicators who, let's face it, usually know about 50 per cent of what's going on in those set pieces.

So Deans banished Baxter.

But you think after the Perth debacle that Ben Daley, Saia Faingaa and Salesi Ma'afu won't have a target on their heads tomorrow in Sydney and for the foreseeable future? Opposition forwards will relish smashing into those nice boys and committing every unthinkable act imaginable, knowing they can get away with it.

As Nigel Owens demonstrated in Perth, once a scrum is hurtled backwards, the temptation to only referee one team - the one under pressure - is overwhelming.

Baxter, who at 33, is at potentially the peak age for a prop, must have found that performance and that of the Australian Barbarians midweek hard to watch. Not that he would have been able to prevent it, but he knows better than anyone what it's like to be a rugby fall guy.

Now refs won't just be picky with Big Al -- they have a whole generation of up and coming Australian front rowers to crucify.