Just how much fatigue will come into Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry’s third test at FNB Stadium on Saturday?
Will the Boks’ lesser playing minutes stack up, and have the All Blacks been able to withstand the physicality and still bounce back?
For the opening weeks of the tour we have heard various opinions and thoughts on the fatigue factor, the attrition rate of the physicality of the tour and the thoughts that this Saturday’s third test will be crucial.
And it will. The team that loses on Saturday can only draw the series in Baltimore, and the morale victory of winning two tests in South Africa is a massive motivator for both sides going into the third week of the tour.
But while the Boks have lost Damian Willemse to a hamstring injury this week, the All Blacks have come through the opening two tests unscathed. They have seen their team withstand a barrage of physicality and won the first test on a canter as the Boks fell apart in the last 20 while their late comeback in the second test made the result a lot closer than it should have been.
That is the hallmark of a good side, and Dave Rennie’s team clearly believe they are primed to put in a big performance at Soccer City - the venue of the 2010 Football World Cup final.
The Boks have only played there three times, lost two against the All Blacks in an era where the black jersey dominated all of World Rugby and their return to the 90 000 seater stadium is more about economics than the drawcard of the actual stadium.
ALL BLACKS STAYED IN CAPE TOWN
Still, the tourists' decision to stay in Cape Town to prepare for the altitude test until Wednesday is an interesting one - as it goes against the grain when it comes to preparing for games at altitude. Mostly the idea is to get to altitude as quickly as possible, or leave your arrival as late as possible.
There is no doubt a high-tempo side like the All Blacks knows how to play at altitude and their performances over the years in Gauteng have bucked the trend, scoring wins where most other sides fail.
But this is no ordinary series and the third game is going to be interesting viewing from the point of view of conditioning. The All Blacks will only name their side on Thursday, and we may see them freshen up one or two players for this game.
Still, it isn’t something that concerns them too much. As attack coach Mike Blair put it, they are pretty happy where the squad is at after two tough weekends of test rugby.
“Phil Healy spends a huge amount of time looking at the numbers, in terms of the metres we do in training and in games, and he's managed the guys really well,” Blair said referring to the New Zealand conditioning coach.
“ We're looking at the end of the game thinking, does anyone need a break? who's moving well? who's not ? — even at 70 minutes we had guys sprinting around to try and connect as a backline, so we didn't feel we had to make a change because of what was happening on the field, but having someone with fresh legs can make a change in impetus.
“I think Josh (Moorby) was the only one who didn't come on. We'd talked about him coming on, but with the flow of the game, and Leroy scoring his try and looking busy, we didn't feel that was something we had to do at the time. The form of the other players in the midweek games has been really good — we just have to get our balance right between cohesion, guys who've played together and understand each other, and a lift from a new player coming in to prove what they've got.”
BOKS HAVE PLAYED LESSER MINUTES
That approach will be tested this weekend with the Boks sticking to their same team for the third test in a row. The caveat is that many of the Bok players were rotated in July while the All Blacks played their team through the July window.
Players like Eben Etzebeth, who was exceptional in Cape Town, is on his fourth game back and finding form again. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has his fourth outing and Lood de Jager is still shy of game time. But all round the Boks are fresher as they have played less minutes in the international season than their counterparts.
Erasmus was asked at the team announcement on Monday about his team fading late in the game, as they did in Cape Town and he offered that point as a rebuttal. While pointing out the cards in the last 10 minutes had an effect in both games, he referred back to the Boks at the World Cup in 2023 and how they struggled a week after a big, physical game to impose themselves again.
The Springboks will play their final home Test for the year at FNB Stadium and coach Rassie says they need fire in the belly and ice in the veins to say goodbye in the best possible way 🇿🇦🗣️#RugbysGreatestRivalry pic.twitter.com/H1ANHJsT1E
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) August 31, 2026
“If you take it back to those specific World Cup games, the teams that played against us had seven-day turnarounds, and we had six-day turnarounds, and we were flat, but we managed to pull it through in most of those games when we beat back-to-back teams,” Erasmus said.
“ I've been involved with the Lions series and way back in '96 with the Springboks as well as a player, the series only really gets really, really competitive — not that these two games weren't competitive — when you start getting injuries in week three, four, and normally the decider is the fourth game. I know a lot of people said four-nil and three-one and things like that, but we think it'll always come down to the wire in the last game.
CHANGED IT UP
“In the first two games we've used thirty players now, so it's already a lot of guys that have chopped and changed. And I guess by the last game, we would have used thirty-six, and that's almost our whole squad that we have here. There will be four players that I think will not get a run in this series. I looked at the six weeks of international rugby that the New Zealand players played in terms of minutes, because for me that's normally the indication, and I look at the minutes we played over the last six weeks, and we probably - per man, - played sixty minutes less than them, so hopefully punch-drunk wouldn't come into this game.”
Those 60 minutes could be crucial but it is a fascinating watch. Two different approaches and two teams gambling their approach is correct.
Whoever wins on Saturday will take bragging rights onto the plane to the USA and know they cannot lose the series.
And that makes it even more fascinating to watch.