Null values injected when mixing Grails and Spring-batch

Mild annoyance that I haven't found the root cause for, but I'm finding that not all mistakes I make in wiring up a job (like missing tag closings or pointing to a bean that doesn't exist) showing up as errors when running tests. Instead it just injects null values and leaves me scratching my head. I assume this is because I'm using grails and not just straight spring, but again I'm still looking for the root cause.