The All Blacks are wary that the Springboks will try and slow the ball down in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry test series later this month and will be doing everything in their power to ensure that the game gets played at a fast pace.
The rhetoric has already been pinned down and raised by coach Dave Rennie, who this week pointed to the way the Stormers slowed down the game against the All Blacks in the tour opener, as something they want to see policed more.
However, the pace of the game is often determined by the team in possession and considering the difference in styles, it is quite easy to believe that one team may be slowing the game down when in fact they are simply executing their game plan.
Rennie’s assertion is the first salvo in the expected mind games ahead of the test, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see more of this as we lead up to the first game at Ellis Park on 22 August.
Teams normally play to their strengths, so a team that would be more forward based will be keen to use their pack more, which often can lead to stoppages.
“That's the question we'll be asking. We'll give some feedback to the officials later today in preparation for the Sharks game as well,” Rennie said ahead of the Sharks game.
“We need to get that going, if we can keep sides wanting to put players on the floor and lengthen the amount of stoppage, we need the officials to understand it's tactical and let us play. It's a real trend in world rugby at the moment, every time there's a lineout, sides round the ball and there's a big meeting. We'd like to just actually get the game going. Historically that's been refereed and officiated, so we would like to see that.”
Super Rugby has put time limits on certain interactions in games to try and speed play up, and the All Blacks feel they will have an advantage if it is reffed the same way.
In a bid to limit the amount of scrums in the game, accidental offsides and teams delaying playing the ball away from a ruck resulted in free-kicks rather than scrums. Additionally, players were allowed to take quick taps within one metre either side of the mark, or anywhere behind the mark, if they were within that two-metre channel running parallel to the touchlines.
But there has been skepticism that those laws actually speed up games, as New Zealand rugby moves closer to rugby league in its law tweaks than to rugby itself.
At the time of announcement, both Felix Jones and former referee Jaco Peyper, part of the Springbok coaching squad, questioned whether those laws would actually speed up the game.
Those laws aren’t being implemented for the test series, but it is clear the All Blacks want the scrums to be set faster, and less downtime between phases.
“I think it's easy for the referee to manage, put a clock on a few things at the moment. I like the whole scenario, clock plus five seconds once the ball's available, you can’t roll it back for five seconds behind a ruck and then take five seconds to kick,” Rennie said.
Still, the pressure that New Zealand is under from Rugby League and the mind games ahead of the test point to trying to tip the scales a little bit in their favour and will be interesting to watch.