Australia's most capped Test prop, Al Baxter believes that his recent scrum problems are not career threatening.

Baxter has had his ups and downs in the set-piece which includes the infamous scrummaging debacle at Twickenham in 2005.

He was also consistently penalised at scrum-time in Auckland a month ago, and he was hauled off after 30 minutes in Saturday's 18-19 Tri Nations loss to New Zealand.

"I never like to come off early but I guess when I wasn't performing as well as I should have, they get someone else on," Baxter told reporters on Sunday.

"I don't think it's a huge issue or anything," he said.

"It's been frustrating the last couple of games but certainly it hasn't been an issue in the Super 14, it wasn't an issue last year in Test rugby.

"It's just been something that's come up in the last two New Zealand games.

"Career-wise, it's nothing."

Baxter stressed that the scrummaging style of the All Blacks, rather than any extra scrutiny from referees, is the problem.

"When the All Blacks play in the Tri Nations there seems to be a lot of resets simply because they pack low," he said.

"When you play the Springboks, they pack really high, they're bigger blokes so I guess they can't get as low, it means that a lot more scrums stay up."

Wallabies coach Robbie Deans said after the match that he had always intended to replace Baxter if he ran foul of referee Jonathan Kaplan.

"We were going to go the moment he encountered difficulty with the referee, which we did," Deans said.

"That was a contributing factor but we always anticipated getting Benny Alexander into the game as well."

Australia can, of course, still mathematically win the series. For that to happen they will have to win all three their remaining matches - two at home against the Boks and one against New Zealand in the competition's last fixture on September 19.

The Boks will also have to falter against New Zealand, which will give all three countries three wins with bonus points the final clincher.