A diehard All Blacks supporter telephoned me from New Zealand to talk about the Wallabies versuss All Blacks Test on Saturday night. He was, in the New Zealand vernacular, gung-ho about his side’s chances. He fancied a handsome win.

Then I asked him if he knew who the referee for the Test was. He didn’t know.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Wayne Barnes,” I replied.

There was the sort of stunned silence you get when someone is confronted with an alarming piece of news that destroys their confidence, totally, in getting an outcome.

When he finally recovered his voice, he said, somewhat diffidently, “Oh my god, the All Blacks will be playing 17 men – the Wallabies XV, the crowd and the referee!”

The Wallabies and the crowd, yes. After all, it is a home game for the Wallabies. Michael Cheika’s Wallabies will be fired up to break a drought of not defeating the All Blacks since 2011, a run of 10 Tests (eight lost and two drawn).

If the Wallabies fail to win, it would equal their record number of Tests against any opposition without winning. That record also came against the All Blacks, when the Wallabies failed to win any of their 11 Tests between 1967 and 1978.

But it is hardly fair to pre-judge the performance of a referee before it has actually happened. Having said that, though, there is some history between the English referee Barnes, the All Blacks, and their supporters.

Just as Queen Mary was said to have died with ‘Calais’ written on her heart, All Black supporters will die with the words ‘Cardiff, Rugby World Cup 2007′ carved on their broken hearts. The reference, of course, is to the quarter-final against France, lost by the All Blacks even though they were on attack for about 90 per cent of the match.

Remarkably, the referee, Wayne Barnes, did not give the All Blacks a single penalty in the last 60 minutes. Moreover, Barnes and the assistant referee Jonathan Kaplan, who was metres away from the incident, missed an obvious forward pass in the build-up to France’s second try, the match winner.

Barnes started the match by awarding France a penalty from the kick-off against Richie McCaw.

When he retired from coaching the All Blacks, Graham Henry wrote a scathing attack on Barnes’ refereeing performance, listing many errors. There is hardly an All Black supporter who disagrees with Henry.

A couple of years after the Cardiff quarter-final, I was walking in the wonderful wharf precinct of Wellington one night, a couple of days before an All Blacks vs Wallabies Test, and I spotted Barnes sitting forlornly, without company, in an empty restaurant.

In an attempt to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the New Zealand public, he’d been sent to New Zealand to referee some local matches and get a feel for the rugby there.

The effort was successful, or World Rugby thought so, because in 2013 Barnes was given a Wales vs All Blacks Test, at Cardiff.

Barnes was tough on a Welsh scrum that was under all sorts of pressure, but he allowed Welsh players to slow the game down so much that the first half of the Test was stretched to 50 minutes. According to New Zealand rugby writers, he made a couple of mistakes but “his effort wasn’t bad at all”.

McCaw was asked after the Test if he had reminded Barnes of his obligation to keep the game moving. In a weary voice, he replied, “Fairly regularly, yeah.”

And what was Barnes’ response to his queries, McCaw was asked.

“It was pretty obvious to see it. He didn’t have one,” interjected Steve Hansen. This intervention suggests there remains a certain nervousness in the All Blacks camp about Barnes as a referee.

Now we switch from Barnes and the All Blacks to Barnes and the Wallabies. And here the difference can be seen from the headline to an article written by Bret Harris in The Australian prior to a Wales vs Wallabies match on November 30, 2013: ‘English referee perfect fit for the Wallabies‘.

Harris pointed out that the Wallabies had won (this is still the case) all their Tests, nine in 2013, with Barnes as the referee.

Barnes was the referee when the Wallabies thrashed the Pumas 54-17 at Rosario, with his decision not to award a penalty try against the Wallabies for persistent collapsing of the scrums being “the turning point in the match”, according to Harris.

In the Test against Wales, Warren Gatland revived the Barnes forward-pass mistake against the All Blacks at Cardiff 2007 by claiming that a pass from Israel Folau to Joe Tomane, allowing a crucial try, would have been ruled forward had the All Blacks been on the field.

My take is that Barnes was too inexperienced (Richie McCaw’s view) to be given that quarter-final in 2007. He froze. And could not bring himself to penalise France out of a World Cup they were hosting.

But if All Black supporters are honest, they will admit that Henry and his coaching staff stuffed up in their preparation for the tournament. The 2007 All Blacks were rotated so often they never presented the same team twice at the tournament.

Worst of all, given that two Rugby World Cup finals have been decided by dropped goals, the All Blacks did not have a dropped goal play in their system.

Years on, Barnes is now a tough referee in the northern hemisphere tradition of nit-picking. But he will be fair to both sides on Saturday night.

This nit-picking, rather officious manner of refereeing could well come from Barnes’ profession as a barrister specialising in “bribery and corruption, serious and complex fraud, money laundering, asset forfeiture, tracing and confiscation”.

In a CV summary of his experience, it is noted that “Wayne has appeared regularly for the defence in cases involving commercial fraud and money laundering… and has conducted complex internal investigations in Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia as part of an anti-corruption compliance initiative.”

Someone with this professional CV can be expected to be the full bottle on the complex laws of rugby. I would think, too, putting on my armchair psychologist cap, that Barnes has a tendency to look for wrong-doing.

He clearly has a brilliant investigative mind, with an ability to master complex information. In the rugby context, this makes him a black-letter referee. I would expect, therefore, severe scrutiny of the rucks and mauls.

This will have an impact on McCaw’s play, given that Barnes seems to have a history of believing the All Blacks captain stretches the laws at ruck time.

But it could tell also against the Wallabies, given that that Michael Cheika has picked two number 7s. David Pocock is playing in the number 8 position but I expect him to concentrate on getting turnovers and/or slowing down the All Blacks’ ruck ball.

Michael Hooper, who has the speed of a winger, will probably play wider and try to help Matt Giteau in defence when he is confronted with the massive Sonny Bill Williams running at him.

The All Blacks have conceded 12.5 penalties a Test this season. They are a penalty-conceding side. This does not bode well for them given Barnes likes to round out most phases of play with a penalty.

The Wallabies have conceded 11 penalties a Test this year – fewer than the All Blacks, but still too many. The Springboks give away fewer penalties that most other sides and regard any number from 10 conceded or more to be a failure.

As for his other selections, Cheika likes the two-playmaker style of play at 10 and 12. He is clearly trying to see if Giteau can hold his own against the bigger inside centres he might be confronted with during the 2015 Rugby World Cup. He will find an answer on Saturday night.

The selection of Drew Mitchell is about establishing whether the veteran offers more to the Wallabies than, say, Joe Tomane. Mitchell is also a left-foot kicker and this should help the Wallabies in clearing from near their try line on the right-hand side of the field. The Waratahs were trapped in this part of the field by the Highlanders, their inability to clear effectively significantly aiding in their unexpected defeat.

Although Cheika has been talking up the need for his pack to be physical, he has dropped monster second rower Will Skelton to the reserves. The Dean Mumm-James Horwill second row does not appear to have the physicality Cheika says he has been demanding from his players.

Possibly, with two shortish number 7s playing, the Wallabies need as many jumpers in the lineout as they can put in the pack. In the first three Tests of this year the Wallabies won 95 per cent of their lineouts. Can they maintain this record without their usual lineout caller and best jumper, Rob Simmons?

The All Blacks, named before the Wallabies, have left Sam Whitelock, their best jumper, on the reserve bench. Luke Romano, a Brad Thorn-type of hard man, will find more joy in smashing into Mumm and Horwill than into Skelton, one would think.

In general, this Wallabies side is curious. It seems short on really hard players taking the ball up. Both the backs and the forwards, in fact, are on the smallish side. I know, I know, the official statistics indicate that the packs have about the same weight, but there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Cheika has selected a side for running the ball, at least in the backs. But as Rod Kafer has pointed out, this ball-in-hand game needs to be balanced by a notion about playing territory from time to time. However, the pack doesn’t seem imposing enough to apply a grinding pressure on the All Blacks’ set pieces.

Before Cheika announced his team, there was widespread agreement in rugby circles that the Wallabies would win on Saturday night. This was based in part on the talk out of camp about the physicality of the training sessions with the forwards (Skelton and Wycliff Palu), and the hard running of the backs (Israel Folau, Tomane, Matt Toomua).

The Wallabies were going to rough up the All Blacks, the way the Waratahs roughed up the Crusaders at ANZ Stadium this season, we were told.

But Palu won’t be playing at all and Skelton will come on as an impact player. Where is the roughing up going to come from? Where is the hard running in the five-eighths going to come from without Toomua?

Last season the Wallabies were twice very close to defeating the All Blacks. At Sydney, with scores level, they had a scrum near the All Blacks’ posts, with time virtually up. But a Sam Cane turnover stopped a drive to the try line. Why oh why didn’t the Wallabies take the easy and obvious option of dropping a goal?

After being hammered in Auckland, the Wallabies came back and again almost defeated the All Blacks, losing by only 2 points at Brisbane.

Have the All Blacks improved on last year? I believe so.

The Wallabies are playing at home, in theory this is a tremendous advantage. But in their last five Tests against the All Blacks at ANZ Stadium, the Wallabies are winless, with four losses and a draw. However, the Waratahs under Cheika were successful at the venue against the Crusaders in the 2014 Super Rugby final.

The key factor in any Wallabies win will be whether Pocock and Hooper can work together effectively, rather than get in each other’s way. If they can slow down the All Blacks’ ball at the ruck and force them to give away penalties to stop them, then the Wallabies will be well on the way to a famous victory.

But this is a big ‘if’ given the All Blacks backrow of McCaw, Jerome Kaino, and Kieran Read is one of their greatest ever.