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Paul Williams: 'The All Blacks can still leave you spellbound like no other team'
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All Blacks-Springboks series a battle of slow versus fast
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Do the Springboks really want to play a fast game?
The answer to that question still has not been provided to us despite evolving their game significantly since 2023.
South Africa have aligned themselves with the northern hemisphere club game, but they like to ‘feel’ like they belong in the southern hemisphere. At some point, the integration with Europe becomes ingrained.
The game speed in the northern hemisphere is slower, despite ball-in-play time being comparable across the leagues. High ball-in-play time doesn’t automatically equal fast.
Down in the south, Super Rugby Pacific has pushed forward with stripping out dead time in a fixture, stricter time limits on scrum setting, and more freedom on quick tap plays, while the officiating style differs drastically to continue the flow of a game.
The teams in Super Rugby Pacific prioritise a lot of high-tempo phase play and deep kicking. You will almost never see a contestable kick plan, rather a long multi-phase attack before a long kick.
Aerial contests are rare in Super Rugby, and as a result you could say that New Zealand, Australian and Pacific players are less experienced and accomplished in this area.
The officiating team for the All Blacks-Springboks series will be slanted towards a northern hemisphere style, with Englishmen Karl Dickson and Matt Carley joining Georgian Nika Amashukeli as three of the four crew. Angus Gardner of Australia is the only referee from the southern hemisphere.
If this news has been welcomed by the South Africans, you can understand it.
Carley and Amashukeli officiated during the two biggest Springbok wins over the All Blacks in history, Carley at Twickenham in 2023 and Amashukeli last year in Wellington.
But this would also indicate that the Boks prefer a northern hemisphere game, challenging their identity.
The latest ruck speeds by Opta from the July internationals showed South Africa as the slowest nation of the 12 in the Nations Championship, with a pedestrian 4.23 seconds per ruck.
New Zealand were third at 2.95 seconds, a click behind France (2.93) and Ireland (2.91). When halfback Cam Roigard was on the field, New Zealand had a 2.90-second ruck, which would have placed them first.
Although they have fast athletes out wide, South Africa are playing a slow game with the ball, and you can assume they want it officiated that way.
The All Blacks, on the other hand, want the opposite.
Dave Rennie has clearly moved the team back towards a high tempo, higher-risk, attacking side that kicks far less.
They want to play with speed over high phase counts, with fast recycles, fast handling, fast decisions. And they want to do it from anywhere, adopting a far more daring approach than what Scott Robertson had in mind.
When the All Blacks last visited South Africa in 2024, they had regressed towards a conservative version of the game. The 18-12 loss in Cape Town was the perfect example of this uninspiring, low-risk descent. It was an attritional war, a physical and engrossing battle, but one for the purists.
The All Blacks kicked plenty of times and defended for most of the game; they carried 121 times for just four line breaks. The lineouts were a mess on both sides, with the contest defined by success in the air. New Zealand had a field day at the breakdown, winning 10 turnovers.
The All Blacks settled for threes to build a 9-3 lead, only to watch it evaporate from one converted Springbok try.
They failed to score a single try in their efforts. The irony was that they were playing more like the Springboks did from 2019-2023, and couldn’t beat South Africa at their own game.
In the process, they forgot about the natural advantages of New Zealand players and what makes the All Blacks the All Blacks.
The blueprint to success in South Africa was clear in 2022 at Ellis Park under former head coach Ian Foster.
Foster has seen a lot of Tests in South Africa under Hansen, and came away with Test wins in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
In 2022, he stuck with the same game plan after losing in Mbombela and backed the team to execute. They did, putting up a 35-23 victory that became the catalyst for a turnaround and World Cup run.
Robertson ignored that blueprint and tried to beat the South Africans at their own game, which backfired with two losses from two attempts, despite holding the lead in both games at the half.
Now the current narrative is that the Springboks have become a powerhouse attacking team. They are scoring a lot of points and averaging six tries a Test. This doesn’t mean they are a powerhouse ball-in-hand team.
While it is true that the Springboks have evolved under Tony Brown, becoming more enterprising with a host of brilliant outside backs, there is a balance, and they haven’t strayed too far away from their natural strengths.
The prime example of this is the Wellington Test in 2025 with a final quarter surge to blow away the All Blacks 43-10.
It was a chaotic game where the Boks bested the All Blacks in many areas, including a willingness to counter-attack that night.
In the first 20 minutes, South Africa completely dominated possession and territory but with little reward. They tested the All Blacks frequently playing a wide-wide game, but didn’t actually profit with any tries.
New Zealand countered in the last 20 minutes of the first half to finish with a 10-7 half-time lead, countering with a wide-wide attack pattern of their own.
Despite plenty of promise with ball-in-hand, South Africa’s only try of the first half was a runaway intercept to Kolbe.
Now the interesting part about the landslide second half is that once they had built a lead from Kolbe’s second try, a well-scored team effort from a power-packed set-piece launch, the Springboks reverted to a kick-pressure, set-piece game.
Cobus Reinach hoisted box kicks, Mannie Libbok punched bombs into the sky, and the ensuing scrums from lost balls became penalty machines for South Africa to piggyback downfield.
They kept their grip on the game that way, and once they were in good attacking zones, played with the ball more. But they did not attempt to run all over the All Blacks the same way as the first 20 minutes. That was temporary.
The Boks’ record margin victory didn’t come by beating the All Blacks at their own running game. It was a pretty standard formula from South Africa, and credit to them it worked that night.
Dave Rennie has revived the attacking identity of the All Blacks, and they will come with the intent to hold the ball and attack.
The Boks are still the same and, by all indications, want to go to the air, control the set-piece and slow the game down with ball in hand.
This is what will decide the series: who can control the tempo. Because if the All Blacks do that, they will win.
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