Some of the gloom in New Zealand is a bit overdone and All Black coach Scott ‘Razor’ Robertson is right when he says his team has made progress, but the bad news for the Kiwis is that the Springboks are going to get a lot better too.
The All Blacks returned home from a two-match Castle Lager Rugby Championship tour having lost both games against the world champions to sit with a record from the competition that reads one win in four starts. For a nation that has hogged the southern hemisphere series for most of the almost three decades that started with it being the Tri-Nations, that isn’t good enough.
Yet, the early scrums in the Cape Town test this past weekend, which was won 18-12 by the Boks, may have provided a microcosm of the growth that is being experienced by the All Blacks on a more macro level. In the first two set pieces, it looked like the Kiwis just hadn’t pitched and they were in a dire situation.
But clearly, the All Blacks learned from that and for the next few scrums the pendulum swung somewhat and it looked like it was the visitors who were on the front foot. Indeed they were for many minutes as a team in the two games spread across Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Robertson reckons they were a pass or two away from cracking the Boks in both games.
Or it could have been a kick, with his flyhalf Damian McKenzie missing three second-half attempts at the DHL Stadium, the last of which was a relatively easy one that, had it been successful, would have given the All Blacks the lead with seven minutes to go. It could have been a different game and a different result then.
Siya Kolisi thanks Scott Robertson and the All Blacks for a fierce battle👏🇿🇦#TRC2024 pic.twitter.com/RYGK72ZSKH
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) September 7, 2024
The Boks won by four points in Johannesburg and six in Cape Town, so it was effectively 10 points that separated the sides over the 160 minutes. This was probably also an apt summation of the difference between the teams in the mini-series that made up the Freedom Cup, a trophy that the South Africans have in their cabinet for the first time since 2009.
HOSTS COULD HAVE WON BY MORE
But here’s the thing - while the All Blacks could have won both games, the Boks could have won both more comfortably too. Had Cheslin Kolbe not tried that drop-goal a few minutes from time at the DHL Stadium, the Bok winning margin might easily have been 13 points. In addition, it was the Jordie Barrett intercept try early in the second half at Emirates Airlines Park that rejuvenated the visitors when there had been a certain momentum shift in favour of the Boks at the end of the first half.
If the All Blacks had not been presented with that gift try, the Boks might well have won a lot more comfortably. They certainly appeared from the vantage point of the Ellis Park press box to have had the physical ascendancy in that game a lot longer than the final minutes when they turned the screws on the scoreboard.
Razor is right, his team is improving, and they were light years better in South Africa than they were when they were a bit fortunate to score a 2-0 series win over England at the start of Robertson’s reign, and certainly much better than they were when they lost to Argentina in Wellington.
The Johannesburg game was easily their best performance, eclipsing even their big win at Eden Park over a Pumas team that just didn’t pitch, since their World Cup quarterfinal win over Ireland last October. Their Cape Town performance wasn’t far behind, and if anything their forwards, with Wallace Sititi so excellent in his new role at blindside flank, were better than they were the week before.
MADE ADJUSTMENTS
That they didn’t win the Cape Town game was because the Boks had made adjustments and improvements in the seven days that separated that clash from the one in Johannesburg, most notably to the defence. While the stats do reflect that the Boks missed too many tackles for comfort, the All Blacks weren’t presented with the space on the outside that they managed to create in the first game.
While the previous week South African fans would have felt their heartbeat quicken with nerves every time the All Blacks went wide, particularly in the early parts of that game, this time the road was blocked. When the ball went to the All Black wings, they had to cut infield. It was a bit like the 1995 World Cup final all over again, where the late James Small on the wing shepherded Jonah Lomu into the eager and muscular clutches of centre Japie Mulder.
But while the defensive system dysfunction had been sorted out, the Boks were well short of being at their best. When coach Rassie Erasmus announced a team that included several returning double World Cup winners to the starting side, it was taken by many pundits as an indication that he was looking for more control and a more measured, clinical performance.
STILL A BIT RUSHED
That is not what happened. In the first half, the Boks rushed and overplayed as much as they did in Johannesburg. Instead of protecting their possession at the loose scrums, they left the ball unprotected and exposed and the All Blacks loose-forwards were able to feast at the breakdowns.
Also inhibiting the Bok quest for momentum was the tendency of the backs, in their eagerness to get the attack going, to throw out misdirected passes that went behind the targeted player instead of in front of him. In a word, it was inaccurate, and far from clinical, and the Boks generally lacked the handling finesse of their opponents.
We’re talking forwards here as much as backs. Jasper Wiese was brilliant across both games, but give him an opening and he’s less likely to transfer the ball effectively or come up trumps with the 50/50 situation than his opposite number, Ardie Savea. It’s not just Wiese, and this is not to denigrate any player, but to cue what the Boks are working on since the arrival of Tony Brown as attack coach.
There was an immediate and obvious showcasing of improvements in the Bok skill levels across the board in the first half of the opening test against Ireland in Pretoria. It was less evident when Ireland decided to play them at their own old game and produced some frightening physicality, and in so doing piled the pressure onto their opponents, in Durban a week later.
BEATING ABs WHILE EVOLVING SOUNDS A WARNING
While the signs of progress were certainly there in Johannesburg, the attempts at being flash were also accompanied by a high error rate. The Boks, for all the talk of New Zealand dominance at Ellis Park, could easily have been ahead at halftime instead of trailing had they just got that one more pass away, or had that pass gone to hand. Or had they driven the ball a bit more rather than spun it wide.
But this all adds up to something good for South Africa and something that is quite ominous for New Zealand in their quest to reclaim their former No 1 status, which requires them to beat the Boks, and other future opponents. For there is evolution going on. Evolution though, almost by its very definition, doesn’t happen quickly. If the Boks suddenly transformed overnight into the well-rounded machine that the injection of Brown’s thinking probably aspires to, that wouldn’t be evolution, that would be Wizard of Oz.
There are elementary errors and decision-making errors that are inevitable when you are introducing new things. Make no mistake, look hard enough and you can see changes and improvements. It may be the imagination at work, and maybe a glance at the video of his play in the Ireland series is necessary for complete confirmation, but Handre Pollard at flyhalf looked to be playing far closer to the gainline than he has for a while. Or to be more precise, he looked a lot more comfortable doing it than he did against Ireland.
The mistakes being made are the inevitable growing pains that come with growth. That’s why New Zealand and the rest should be concerned - the Boks are a team going through growing pains but they were still good enough to beat the All Blacks.
New Zealand should be a better team when these teams next meet in New Zealand next year, but if they carry on along their current path, and continue to refresh, and Rassie continues to keep everyone on their toes with his selections, the Boks should be better too. Much, much better.