The accepted theory is that as the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series goes deeper, so the Springboks will become stronger as the attrition rate catches up with the touring All Blacks and the South African depth comes through.
And to some extent this theory has fuel to sustain it, with All Black coach Dave Rennie having to work overtime on figuring out who should replace players who return home injured. The latest touring player to cop it is the promising openside flank Anton Segner, who will travel with the squad to Cape Town and then, according to Rennie, fly home.
The injury to Josh Lord in the opening test match in Johannesburg last weekend necessitated what Rennie would have considered the unwanted situation of having to ask Patrick Tuipoluto, or Sam Darry, to back up his captaincy role by featuring in Saturday’s second test in Cape Town.
However, while injury reports and players returning home and needing to be replaced are occupying much of Rennie’s time as he plots what he hopes will be a second consecutive win over the Boks, the expectations of the All Blacks systematically running out of firepower may be overstated at this point.
And while the All Black reserve team, with Tuipoluto leading, were taken to the wire by a fired up 10Bet Lions team in the Tuesday midweek game at Ellis Park, there were enough individual performers in their 41-35 win, where they came from being 35-17 down to score four unanswered tries in the last half an hour, for the exercise to prove worthwhile for Rennie.
Maybe not for Saturday’s game at the DHL Stadium, aside of course for Tuipoluto coming through unscathed and maybe a few others who might find themselves in the wider test match squad, but for the two big games that follow at FNB Stadium and then in Baltimore to wind off the tour.
COACH KEEN FOR CLOSER STUDY OF BLACKADDER'S CONTRIBUTION
Rennie can’t expect to go the whole four matches with a similar, core team, and in that regard it was a happy coincidence that on the day that Segner was ruled out of the rest of the tour Ethan Blackadder should prove the outstanding player at Ellis Park.
He scored two tries of his own and was so omnipresent and influential in the come from behind win that he may even enter the conversation for the DHL Stadium game.
“I am keen to look back on his performance (in more detail),” said Rennie. “He was all over the park and he got his hand on a lot of ball post tackle. He carried a lot and he made a lot of tackles. He has a big engine. He had a massive impact on the game tonight.”
He sure did and so did Reiko Ioane, the sometime wing who is excelling at outside centre with every tour outing. If it had not been for Blackadder’s influence, the centre, who played URC rugby for Leinster in the last URC and Champions Cup season, would have been the star player.
Like the Stormers in the opening game, the Lions pushed the visitors, and in some ways managed to do what the Springboks couldn’t do in the test match played at the same venue three days earlier - they converted their periods of forward ascendancy into points.
That made for a great game to watch and be at, with the official crowd figure of just under 16 000 feeling significantly more than that as both the Lions supporters and those following the All Blacks around the country got behind their teams.
LIONS WERE IN IT UNTIL 77TH MINUTE
With the Lions playing the game a few weeks deeper into their pre-season than the other local club sides did when they faced the All Blacks, and also only having one player, Morne van den Bergh, absent to Springbok duty, this was always going to be the game where the home team might have the best chance of winning. And in the end they came mighty close.
“We were in the game for 77 minutes, it was up until that point (when the All Blacks monstered the Lions scrum) that we believed we might pull off a miracle,” said Lions coach Cash van Rooyen afterwards.
There were several stand outs for the Lions, not the least of them their captain Francke Horn and flyhalf Chris Smith, who in this game suddenly decided to add a lethal breaking ability to his repertoire, but it was 22-year-old Siba Mahashe that was the talking point afterwards.
The final tour game was a telling moment to remind everyone that this country does have huge depth in talent, and if these games had been played in season, instead of in the pre-season for the local club sides, the All Blacks would have struggled to get through the non-test encounters unscathed.
In the end it was the first and last that were the best - the Stormers were missing nine players to Bok duty and others such as JD Schickerling to injury when they pushed the All Blacks to the 68th minute in a game played three weeks into their pre-season, and the Lions showed us what might have happened had all the teams been full strength.