It is over-simplifying things to describe Saturday’s first test of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series as a clash of diametric opposite styles and former All Black skipper Sean Fitzpatrick provided some Kiwi sanity when he asked why the Springboks would want to slow the ball down.
Speaking at the trophy unveiling ceremony at the SAB headquarters in the Johannesburg suburb of Bryanston, Fitpatrick questioned the prevailing pre-match narrative of the South Africans being the ones who’d want to slow the game and the ball down on the basis of the considerable threats they pose across the park.
Threats that were to the fore when they ran riot in the second half of their Rugby Championship clash with the New Zealanders in Wellington last year. There was no slowing the ball down then, and the Kiwis would have wished they could slow down the game, such was the Bok dominance over them.
It has been said already this week but bears repeating - if your aim is just to kick every ball in the air you are wasting Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s talents as a flyhalf, and definitely those of his back-up on Saturday, Manie Libbok, too.
RESPECTIVE BENCHES TALK TO THE TEAMS’ INTENT
That the Boks are set up to bludgeon the visitors into submission with their forwards is clear from the selection of a six/two bench, with Bok coach Rassie Erasmus having the luxury of having Andre Esterhuizen to call on if an emergency develops around injuries to players in the backline.
However, Esterhuizen, or ‘Andre the Giant’ as some know him, has been numbered as a forward on the team list issued on Thursday. So it is a six/two split, whereas the All Blacks have the traditional five/three split. In other words, the two team selections do speak to the pre-match narrative - the All Blacks don’t even have a lock on the bench, so they look set up to try and run the Boks off their feet.
Which won’t be a surprise to Erasmus, who noted the statistics of the All Black game this season under the coaching of Dave Rennie -such as twice as many rucks etc - even before the tourists arrived on these shores two weeks ago. Erasmus has long known what to expect from the New Zealand challenge.
Indeed, he sounded like he might be goading the opposition when in the team announcement press conference he made a comment that could easily be translated into “They’ve talked the talk so they have to walk the walk”. And he’s right. If the All Blacks deviate from the style that their hooker Codie Taylor said “does justice to rugby” after last week’s win over the Vodacom Bulls, they will be going counter to what they believe should be a global rugby philosophy.
Rennie and his fellow management members and team leadership, behaving as if they are blissfully unaware that there was a State of the Game conference at which there was global input and decisions made from there, haven’t held back in their quest to influence the match officials and perhaps also World Rugby denizens in the system, some such as the rugby chief of World Rugby, Mark Robinson, who have a Kiwi flavour to them, that theirs is the way rugby should be played.
THREE REASONS OPENING QUARTER WILL BE PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT
Which really cues why the opening 20 minutes of the Ellis Park game are going to be so significant. As always when these two teams meet for the first time in the international season, there are two pillars of debate - will the Kiwis be able to handle the physicality of the Boks, and conversely, will the South Africans be able to live with the All Black tempo?
In Nelspruit in 2022 it was the former question that was answered positively for South Africa, although on the fast paced pitch that is Ellis Park New Zealand made the counter-point a week later. Admittedly in that game the Bok coaches seemed to be determined to save the then All Black coach Ian Foster his job because there were some bizarre selection calls.
In the next game, the first of three meetings between the teams in the World Cup year, with the third being the global final, it was the New Zealand tempo that shocked the Boks early on. They came back a bit into it later, but they were outplayed in the first half, and it was a similar story at Eden Park last year.
It shouldn’t take long to find out if the All Blacks have a chance of succeeding in their objective. If they can ensure the game avoids early scrums, Wilco Louw could find himself running zigzags across Ellis Park rather than producing the powerhouse performance in his primary role he has been selected for.
That though cues the third question that will be answered in the first quarter - the refereeing, and the impact of the Kiwi attempts at persuasion when it comes how a game should look. If referee Matt Carley blows advantage too quickly, it could spell trouble for the Boks. If he allows the All Blacks to get away with the dark arts that they have become better at under Rennie it could also give the visitors a foothold in the game.
REFEREEING DEBATE HAS ATTRACTED MONEY TO KIWIS AT THE BOOKIES
We are talking here about those tucked shoulder hits in the breakdown cleanouts that you will note, if you search through the internet and find the relevant Youtube videos, he has coached for more than a decade, as well as the messy approach to maul defence that they got away with but the opposition flagged as a concern in the games against the SA club teams.
And that really is why this first game of the series is harder to predict than perhaps the later ones might be, once the attrition has started to take toll and the squads have to dig deep into their depth. We don’t really know ahead of time how the referee is going to police the focus points of the buildup debate, and it might be why there has been money coming in on the Kiwis at the bookies this week.
The Boks remain favourites though, and the around eight point spread is to my mind spot on. If the Boks can replicate what they did in the second half at this venue against England on 4 July for closer to a full game this time, their power game and the slow poison of their physicality should wear New Zealand down and they should prevail.
Teams
South Africa: Damian Willemse, Cheslin Kolbe, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Grant Williams, Jasper Wiese, Pieter-Steph du Toit (captain), Paul de Villiers, Ruan Nortje, Eben Etzebeth, Wilco Louw, Malcolm Marx, Ox Nche. Replacements: Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Gerhard Steenekamp, Zachary Porthen, Cobus Wiese, Andre Esterhuizen, Marco van Staden, Cobus Reinach, Manie Libbok.
New Zealand: Damian McKenzie, Wil Jordan, Quinn Tupaea, Jordie Barrett, Josh Moorby, Ruben Love, Cam Roigard, Adrie Savea, Luke Jacobson, Tupou Vaa’i, Fabian Holland, Josh Lord, Tyrel Lomax, Codie Taylor, Ethan de Groot. Replacements: Asafo Aumua, George Bower, Fletcher Newell, Anton Segner, Peter Lakai, Kyle Preston, Anton Lienert-Brown, Lreoy Carter.
Referee: Matt Carley (England)
Kick-off: 17.10
Prediction; South Africa to win by 8