It’s here, the day we have been waiting for ever since the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour concept was first mooted, and there couldn’t be a better place than Cape Town and a better team than the DHL Stormers for the All Blacks to start their odyssey against.
Yes, certainly the timing could have been better from the Stormers’ viewpoint. Normally this would only be the start of their pre-season. It effectively is. They’ve only been back from their holidays for three weeks. Which is hardly enough time for them to get battle hardened - their coach John Dobson admits they should have had a warmup game - and the All Blacks are effectively their first warmup game for a Vodacom URC season that is still eight weeks away.
It’s also not enough time for them to get the clinical aspect of their game working that would be so necessary for them to realistically expect a win against the All Blacks. There’s been a lot of talk this week about 1976, that day back then when Western Province famously beat the tourists with Robbie Blair’s late conversion of Chris Pope’s try from the touchline.
What hasn’t been mentioned much is that Blair’s place-kicking was uncharacteristically off key that afternoon. He missed several attempts, and years later explained it by saying that the All Blacks had asked the ball to be pumped to a different measurement to what the South African teams were used to.
It was probably the memory of those missed kicks that prompted Bossie Clarke, one of the try scorers for WP that day, to tell the Stormers players when he met with them this week that WP should have won by more than just the solitary point. The message though is that to expect to beat the All Blacks, you need to be on point, you need to be clinical.
EXPECT THE HOSTS TO STRUGGLE FOR COHESION
From a cohesion viewpoint, the Stormers could be found sorely wanting in this opening tour game. It isn’t their fault, it is the card they have been dealt by the timing of the game, by South Africa’s alignment to the northern hemisphere season at professional club level, which means this is an off-season game for them. That makes the All Blacks strong favourites.
Another big difference between now and the 1976 game, which was played in season by WP, is that the hosts won’t have the use of their Springboks. Damian Willemse, Cheslin Kolbe, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Cobus Reinach, Siya Kolisi, Ben-Jason Dixon, Paul de Villiers and Zachary Porthen would have made a big difference to the Stormers’ challenge had they been available.
STATS CONFIRM HOW MUCH KIWIS HAVE CHANGED THEIR GAME
But that doesn’t mean that the Stormers are a weak team and that they can’t test what needs to be tested on Friday night, and which the All Blacks might even want to be tested, which is the effectiveness of their more possession orientated game since Dave Rennie took over and which he hopes he can test the Springboks in the forthcoming series.
The stats say it all - the All Blacks made almost twice as many passes during the three Nations Championship matches that Rennie presided over than they did under the coaching of Scott Robertson, they kicked a lot less, and had considerably more attacking rucks than they had before.
Their game has changed, there’s no doubt about that, and Dobson spoke about the seismic change at the pre-match press conference.
“I think everybody in their camp will agree they want to play in South Africa more regularly, to have the regular contact they had with us in Super Rugby, particularly when it comes to being exposed to the kind of rugby that is assumed to be necessary to winning a Rugby World Cup,” said Dobson.
“But we also haven’t been exposed to New Zealand rugby now for quite a while so this game is going to be a really interesting test when it comes to the pace of the game. It is remarkable how much the All Blacks are starting to pass the ball and it is obvious they are going in a certain direction.
“There are two different mindsets in rugby and that has long been the case but just lately the difference has become much more stark. We don’t play against what they will bring to our game every week. We will only know when the game arrives how we will cope with it, and how this game goes might give some pointers towards the test series. Although test rugby is of course very different.”
DEFENCE IN SUPER RUGBY IS VERY PASSIVE
It is different but you can expect the Stormers game to also be different to what the All Blacks have encountered so far in Rennie’s time as coach. The All Blacks were very good in their win against Ireland, but while former Bok defence guru is involved with Leinster, his defensive system is not applied by Ireland.
France did trouble New Zealand for a while during their game at the start of the Nations Championship, when they were playing with an understrength team, and Italy gave the All Blacks food for thought in the first half of their game. But so far the All Blacks haven’t run into the kind of line-speed the Stormers are capable of and which forced Leinster into error in the URC semifinal in early June.
If the Stormers can get that right, the All Blacks might be confronted with something they are not used to, for while there was a lot of enthusiasm in New Zealand for the aesthetics of Super Rugby, the defences looked mostly passive.
Something else you didn’t get to see much of in Super Rugby was contestable kicking, which means the All Blacks are completely untrained in one of the areas where the Boks will pose the biggest threat. The Stormers, at a stadium where a night game is a particularly treacherous proposition at this time of year, will look to unleash an aerial bombardment and aggressive defensive assault that could just take the All Blacks out of their comfort zone.
Of course, it could be reversed too - the Stormers haven’t played a New Zealand team since they lost to the Blues in their last ever Super Rugby game at their old headquarters of Newlands in 2020. This All Black team has amped up on the approach that caused South African teams trouble back then. It is a fascinating prospect and this really isn’t a day you should be laying bets for the answer to every question goes along the lines of “Nobody knows”. We will know more after the game.
TEAMS
DHL Stormers: Warrick Gelant, Seabelo Senatla, Ruhan Nel (captain), Jonathan Roche, Leolin Zas, Yaqeen Ahmed, Imad Khan, Evan Roos, Hacjivah Dayimani, Deon Fourie, Connor Evans, Adre Smith, Neethling Fouche, Andre-Hugo Venter, Vernon Matongo. Replacements: JJ Kotze, Nthuthuko Mchunu, Sazi Sandi, Ruan Ackermann, Keke Morabe, Wandile Mlaba, Dewaldt Duvenage, Wandisile Simelane.
New Zealand: Josh Moorby, LeRoy Carter, Anton Lienert-Brown, Rieko Ioane, Beauden Barrett, Cortez Ratima, Wallace Sititi, Peter Lakai, Simon Parker, Patrick Tuipoluto, Fabian Holland, Pasilio Tosi, Samisoni Taukei’aho, George Bower. Replacements: Osafo Aumua, Ollie Norris, Siale Lauaki, Sam Barry, Ethan Blackadder, Kyle Preston, Josh Jacomb, Caleb Clarke.
Referee: Karl Dickinson (England)
Kick-off: 19.10
Prediction: All Blacks to win by between 15 and 20