It will be interesting to see how much Rassie Erasmus' observation at the post-match press conference after the second Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series test in Cape Town might impact his selection and plan for Saturday’s third game of the rubber at the FNB Stadium.
The Springbok coach and his team returned to Gauteng on Sunday ahead of this coming Saturday’s decisive game at the massive nearly 100 000-seater stadium near Soweto, having wrested the series back to 1-all with a controlled performance at DHL Stadium. With bragging rights over which team comes out on top in the South African leg of the series at a premium, with the final game set for Baltimore in the USA a week later, this week’s game is in many senses a mini-decider.
Given that the All Blacks have only ever won a series in this country once in 105 years (actually 98 since they first travelled here), there is a lot for the squad coached by Dave Rennie and captained by Ardie Savea to play for.
The RGR trophy itself will still be on the line regardless of who wins at the stadium known to many as Soccer City because it was built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup final, but the Boks will not want the Kiwis to leave these shores with a 2-1 advantage from the three games played.
GOT RIGHT IN CAPE TOWN WHAT THEY GOT WRONG IN JOBURG
Making sure of success in South Africa and that they couldn’t lose the RGR series was one of the big motivators for an All Black team that was never really in with a sniff of winning in Cape Town after the Boks got right in the first half what they got wrong in Johannesburg seven days earlier.
Their power game made an impact, and this time they were more composed and controlled in their execution and made the early physical dominance count, following a statement first maul of the game that led to a try in just the second minute.
It was always unlikely the All Blacks would come back from a 10-point halftime deficit, and when Cheslin Kolbe added six more points in the initial stages of the second half, there was a degree of comfort about the Boks.
But the All Blacks did fight back with two late tries, and while they were never going to win, with just a draw up for grabs in the three minutes at the end where they trailed by seven points, the late rally did sound a warning across the Bok bows.
BOK COACH’S STRONG PRAISE FOR KIWI IMPROVEMENT
Indeed, the way the All Blacks managed to keep the ball alive, making a phenomenal more than 240 passes to under a hundred from the Boks, drew strong and honest praise from the winning coach Rassie Erasmus afterwards.
“We were talking about it in the change room afterwards, that this is a very different All Black team that we played in the last few years,” said Erasmus.
“They are very well coached and they have athletes who can beat you on the grass. They are on a different level, maybe two classes above, from where they were last year.”
Indeed, his opposite number drew some encouragement from the Cape Town experience even in defeat.
“We are well aware of the quality of the team that we are playing against so I am really proud of my boys,” said Rennie.
“We were under the pump at various times and yet we managed to stay in the game and in the end we could have stolen a draw. We left a few opportunities out there. We will bounce back next weekend.”
CLOSER ON SCOREBOARD THAN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
He might have said similar things had the All Blacks not gotten themselves out of the hole they found themselves in after 55 minutes at Ellis Park, with the pack coming under unrelenting and powerful pressure from the Bok scrum. That was certainly a game where the All Blacks just did well to hang in at times, and in Cape Town we were left with the impression that the Kiwis came closer to winning, at least on the scoreboard, than they should have.
Had the game ended at 33-19, which it was with four minutes to go, it would have been a far more accurate summation of the contest, but then that’s the All Blacks - they just don’t go away, and every time the Boks got daylight between them and their opponents on the scoreboard, something would happen that allowed their opponents to bounce back.
DEFENCE NEEDS SOME WORK
The defence of two attacks off lineouts that led to the first half tries was poor, with errors made, so it was unsurprising to hear Rennie target the lineouts as an area that needs work on this week.
“We had a lot of lineouts in the game, we had 18 and won 15 of them, but a couple of those were scrappy. The Boks obviously had a pretty good plan around defending our lineout, so it is a work-on this week,” he said.
Whether the scrums remain the work-on that they were after Ellis Park, only Rennie will know, for referee Angus Gardner, as was feared when he was brought in at the 11th hour to replace Georgian Nika Amashukeli because of illness, negated the Bok superiority in that phase with his officiating. It was as if he abdicated responsibility when it came to the scrums.
That the Boks controlled the game like they did when denied the use of their usual scrumming weapon was a big plus for them, yet it will be a concern to them that although they have won the power game in both tests, the All Blacks have managed to score nine tries to four across the 160 minutes played so far.
WILL RASSIE CHANGE UP FOR GAME 3?
Erasmus gave the impression he had a clear plan at the start of the series, and made it an open secret he intended changing up the team for Cape Town had his men won in Johannesburg. That leaves an intriguing question for this week - will he revert to Plan A and change up now, or will he be cognisant of the All Blacks being a tougher opponent than maybe he anticipated and go in with the core of the team that has now played two successive highly intense and physical tests.
With the All Blacks clearly out to avoid contact as much as possible, and often succeeding in that, the anticipated impact of the physical Bok approach, meaning that they’d grind the visitors down physically and leave them vulnerable in the last two games, is not the given it might have been expected to be at the start.
Erasmus said in explaining his selections for the first test that it was a series his team was going into, and that he was selecting around the expectation that the third game would be the decider. Was he saying that, though, because he was expecting to be 2-0 up at that point? It sounded like he intended the bulk of the Ellis Park team to rest in Cape Town in preparation for Soweto, but they ended up backing up at the DHL Stadium, so what now?
It also needs to be remembered that the alternative players and combinations would not have played for a while if selected for Saturday, and lack of continuity was widely blamed for the lack of cohesion that cost the Boks in Johannesburg.
ETZEBETH WAS IMMENSE
It’s going to be interesting to see what Erasmus comes up with for Eben Etzebeth, who has played three games in a row now, has got better with each game and looks to have benefited from his long period away from the game during the South African domestic season. He made a phenomenal 18 tackles in Cape Town, was a disruptor of the All Black lineout, and was all over the field as a carrier and thorn in the opposition’s side.
He could easily have won the man of the match award ahead of Cheslin Kolbe, although Kolbe, like several other players, was excellent too. Will they be excellent though if they have to play a third game in a row? Erasmus didn’t think so before the series started, so it is going to be interesting to see what he comes up with in his selection.
We don’t have long to wait for once again; the team announcement is set for late Monday morning. What we do know for certain is that there will be no Damian Willemse due to the hamstring injury that forced him off at halftime in the second test.
It is a big loss, but Aphelele Fassi, while not in his best form, did play a lot of the earlier internationals, while there is also a lot to be said from an attacking dynamic perspective of the potential for Manie Libbok and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu to be in the same team as a flyhalf/fullback combination, as they were in the second half in Cape Town.