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BIG GAME PREVIEW: Boks must prevent Kiwi fast start

rugby30 August 2024 04:40
By:Gavin Rich
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If you are heading to Emirates Airlines Park for Saturday’s Castle Lager Rugby Championship clash between South Africa and New Zealand, make sure you are in your seats at the kick-off. If you are watching it on television, don’t let your focus be deflected by what is in your fridge.

An intense and ferocious start to the game can be anticipated, with the All Blacks this week focusing on the need to get out of the blocks quickly both to blunt the Springbok quest for an early physical stranglehold on the game as well as to quieten what they expect to be a noisy, hostile, passionate and partisan crowd.

If the All Blacks were to get away quickly, it will be a repeat of what they managed to do in the 2022 game at the same venue. After conceding the early advantage to the Boks in the initial stages of the quest for physical superiority in the previous week’s game at Mbombela, the Kiwis were determined to get their punches in first - figuratively speaking of course. And they did.

They started the stronger and faster of the two teams and while they didn’t get points on the board early, they did silence the crowd by getting the better of the game before tries in the 26th minute and the 32nd minute propelled them into a 15-0 lead.

Although the Boks struck back with a try and penalty before halftime to make the score 15-10 at the halfway point, the effort expended in playing catch-up sapped the Bok energy.

So although the South Africans did finally manage to take the lead in the 66th minute, that lead only lasted seven minutes as the All Blacks scored two quick tries against their tired opponents to make it a 35-22 win.

NEW AB COACH BUT LESSONS RETAINED


There is a new coach and management team in charge of the All Blacks this time, but the lessons of two years ago haven’t been forgotten. Forwards coach Jason Ryan, who himself was a newbie when the All Blacks were last here as he’d just replaced John Plumtree as one of Ian Foster’s assistants, said the visitors will need “unbelievable intensity” to front the Boks, and would need to have from the start to keep the crowd out of it.

And he’s right. When the Boks get on a roll at Ellis Park, the stadium becomes a cacophony of noise that lifts the hosts and drives home momentum.

The All Blacks have come back late in games at the Johannesburg venue before, and boast an excellent recent record on the highveld, but their best chance of winning would be for them to get in early like they did two years ago.

You don’t have to look too far back to when last a team got that right against the Boks and ended up winning. The All Blacks are sure to have studied the second test of the recent series between the Boks and Ireland, where the Irish tore into the Boks with both their physicality and tempo early on and had the World Cup champions looking stunned.

It was the converse of what happened in Pretoria the week before, where it was the Boks who bossed the opening minutes.

Again, like the aforementioned Johannesburg game in 2022, the Boks did come back later, and took the lead. But the end result, with the Hollywoodbets Kings Park game being decided by a last second Ireland drop-goal, feeds the theory that chasing a game does take a lot out of a team.

Not that the Boks don’t have the personnel to chase, particularly now that big Eben Etzebeth is playing off the bench. As is Malcolm Marx, while the experienced head of Handre Pollard, who announced himself on the international stage as a 20-year-old by scoring two tries against the Kiwis at this venue 10 years ago, will bring calmness if it is required.

But it is a risk against the All Blacks to let them get ahead, as the tempo with which they play the game always tests a team’s fitness levels. It is why they have a reputation for winning games in the last quarter.

TIMES MAY HAVE CHANGED

Or at least they did. Times may have changed, and when they lost the first Rugby Championship game against Argentina in Wellington, it was the visitors who were the stronger side in the last 10 minutes.

The Boks will start as favourites even though their record in Johannesburg, particularly if you also factor in games played at Soccer City (FNB Stadium), is not what you’d expect it to be.

They boasted a good record at Ellis Park at the start of the post-isolation era, and have won five of 10 games played between the sides there, but have let that slip in the decade that has passed since a last gasp Patrick Lambie penalty decided the 2014 match in South Africa’s favour.

When these teams play each other subsequent to South Africa’s departure from Super Rugby there are always questions to be asked. Such as the impact that not playing against South Africans so regularly will have on their readiness for the physicality that is thrown at them.

It may not be coincidental that the All Blacks looked so out of it in Nelspruit two years ago and then a week later they were the team that pitched. It may have been because during the Mbombela Stadium game they’d become more acclimatised to the Bok approach and were more ready for it.

Even the Australians more recently looked far more up for the physical battle in the second game of South Africa’s two match tour than they did in the first.

But the questions can also be reversed - just as the All Blacks aren’t as exposed to the South African approach as they used to be in Super Rugby, so the Boks aren’t as used to the tempo the Kiwis bring that they used to be.

And make no mistake, while the Boks do appear to have become fitter and more adept at tempo rugby since the arrival of Tony Brown as attack coach, it is no secret what the All Blacks will be out to do - they will be looking to move the South African big men around.

GETTING BETTER OF BOK PACK EASIER SAID THAN DONE

First and foremost though they need to hit the target with the other thing they got right in Johannesburg compared to Nelspruit last time - they need to ensure they front the Boks at forward and get at least parity in possession. They got better than parity two years ago, and it was why their plan worked.

That though is easier said than done against the Boks and while Etzebeth will be missed in the early stages, the Boks do have forward depth. The memory of how the pack bossed New Zealand in the World Cup warmup game at Twickenham just over a year ago and in early stages of the World Cup final should still be relatively fresh.

Much will hinge on how Ruan Nortje goes in a position that was expected to be occupied by the highly skilled behemoth that is RG Snyman and how Pieter-Steph du Toit goes in Etzebeth’s role at No 4. Plus Ben-Jason Dixon’s ability to produce at a level that may be a step up from where he has been before in the Bok jersey.

The early parts of the game are going to be crucial in determining how this game goes. If the Boks do stamp their authority early, they could win with something to spare. If they don’t, we could see a repeat of 2022. So fasten those seatbelts and focus from the kick-off or you might just miss the decisive stage of the game.

Teams and prediction

South Africa: Aphelele Fassi, Cheslin Kolbe, Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Kurt-Lee Arendse, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Cobus Reinach, Jasper Wiese, Ben-Jason Dixon, Siya Kolisi (captain), Ruan Nortje, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Frans Malherbe, Bongi Mbonambi, Ox Nche. Replacements: Malcolm Marx, Gerhard Steenekamp, Vincent Koch, Eben Etzebeth, Elrigh Louw, Kwagga Smith, Grant Williams, Handre Pollard.

New Zealand: Beauden Barrett, Will Jordan, Rieko Ioane, Jordie Barrett, Caleb Clarke, Damian McKenzie, TJ Perenara, Ardie Savea, Sam Cane, Ethan Blackadder, Tupuo Vaa’i, Scott Barrett (captain), Tyrel Lomax, Codie Taylor, Tamaiti Williams. Replacements: Asafo Aumau, Ofa Tu’ungafasi, Fletcher Newell, Sam Darry, Samipeni Finau, Cortez Ratima, Anton Lienert-Brown, Mark Tele’a.

Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland)

Kick-off: 5pm

Prediction: Springboks to win by 7

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