Dave Rennie's initial assessment of Rugby's Greatest Rivalry series

Not good enough over the full 80 minutes. The last 10 minutes were symptomatic of that. Still too many individual errors costing points against a team like South Africa.

The last two tries scored by South Africa were basically gifted to them.

I’m still left wanting more after these four matches.

I still believe this South African team was beatable over the series, but Rennie’s All Blacks simply weren’t quite good enough to do it. Those individual errors that cost so many points really need to be eliminated, and 2 or 3 players need to be added to strengthen the squad.

The future looks promising, but we are still seeing the same recurring problems with the All Blacks that have been there for many years.

Rennie is doing a good job, but he clearly hasn’t found all the answers yet.

For what it’s worth, I actually thought Ritchie moved the ball well at 10 in tight spaces (possibly fractionally better than Love) and is why Ritchie at 10 and then Love playing at 15 is probably the best combination of their talents going through to RWC 2027.

DMac has struggled, was good in the first game in attack but then found it very hard to have major involvements and is where I think Love would have a much greater impact playing at 15, which also adds significant pace and aerial capability to that back 3.

Newish to rugby and love it, the AB’s and love NZ - worked there for 6 months - but many Ab fans are ridiculous. RSA is simply the better team. They won’t be forever - whatever happened to Ireland….? but right now they clearly are. It’s not the refs, it’s not Rennie, and it’s not the injuries. It’s a young team. One of the best players of all time is past his prime. Most of the team has little or no experience at the international level.

And one consolation you never hear about won’t affect the ratings but does affect the outcomes - hell - NZ has to recruit from 4 million people while rsa, England, France all have far larger populations. It’s amazing that the AB’s are as good as they are.

The ABs are where they should be in second place,the Boks deservedly no 1 , I read a lot of excuses however all that will be remembered is the series victory well done to both teams

World rugby must please sort out their referee panel Karl Dixon miss a lot of Springboks errors, Morne van den berg didn't release, Jessie Kriel loitering on the off side line small things that slowed AB momentum, can't wait for our hybrid Leicester Fainganuka to be released on this old home boks

Congratulations SA on the deserved win this morning, ABs got too loose in the 2nd half and some coach killers from Vaii and Jordy when he kicked possession away round our halfway which led to them going downfield and eventually scoring! The other thing that stood out to me was the deliberate stallling from SA players feigning injury when we had momentum having their medics run out to them, game stops and couple minutes later they're fine and carry on, both Marx and PSDT did this!We've gotta somehow cut this BS out of the game! In stark contrast when the ABs players did this blood pissing out of Cody’s face needs strapping, ALB hobbling and goes off can’t continue…it was GLARINGLY deliberate in this mornings game!

It’s a rebuild year, not so much with a completely fresh roster like in other sports (e.g. an NFL team rebuilding around a number 1 pick after trading away vets), but in play style, leadership reset and trying to build depth before a World Cup that the previous two regimes under Foster and Razor half-assed. The previous regimes before that from 2005-2015 with Henry and Hansen at least built enough depth to avoid having to do a big rebuild (much like Rassie has done with the Boks now) and could just focus on certain positions, which is a different beast doing one now right after rebuilding just a couple of years ago. Hansen’s post-2015 run could also be seen as his rebuilding period but he at least had the benefit of having enough World Cup winning vets around who knew their systems to hold the fort and help keep them winning in spite of that.

Like in other sports, wins are a bonus during rebuilds, but the win-loss record alone doesn’t always reflect the progress. Obviously being the All Blacks mean that people will regularly ignore that context but that doesn’t change what this is. Generally what we should be looking at during rebuilds (from watching more noticeable processes in other pro sports):

1) how much fight the team has (i.e. do they quit or do they play till the end?)

2) how comfortable the team looks in its systems (i.e. do they look like they know what they’re meant to do and does it appear to suit their skillsets?)

3) how many of the losses come from sloppiness (with the idea that errors will be made during transition periods as consistency still has to be learnt and that tidying themselves up will turn those losses to wins). These are more excusable in Y1 of the rebuild.

4) how much growth have the new players (1-3 years in) shown (and ideally they get until the end of the season and evaluated against different levels of competition). Part of this is also finding cornerstone players (i.e. regular starters).

5) game by game progressions. In some cases, the progression can be tracked between specific periods (e.g. in seasonal pro sports, this could be home stand vs road tour, so Nations Champ leg 1 —> RGR tour —> Nations Champ leg 2). Generally some losses expected in the middle period but the change from start and finish are the most important.

What have we got so far in Rennie’s 2 months (a very very short time by any rebuild standards)?

1) a lot - they’ll have down periods sure, but they’ll finish strong even if they’re behind. One could argue stat padding at the end of losses, but it’s a good mentality to have.

2) significantly better than the previous two years. Once they actually get ball and momentum, these ABs can score from anywhere like previous ABs teams could.

3) hard to argue against this one, especially with the games where we led the try count but lost due to penalty goals. The ABs tidy up their penalties, the 2nd game at least could’ve been theirs.

4) Love has looked comfortable despite a rough last outing (counting him as a rookie due to barely any game time last year), Segner looked amazing until injury, Moorby’s looked good and Lakai and Darry have taken a massive step up. The biggest position of worry is prop, but that’s mostly against South Africa than other teams.

5) game by game - improved in each of the first 3 tests of the NC, started strong in the RGR before regressing (injuries considered in the latter 2). If we view the RGR as the middle period, that could be considered their dip, so how they finish is the important part.

If we want to go back and compare this to Razor’s rebuilding attempt:

1) they looked visibly rattled in multiple games and went from poor final quarters to poor third quarters that they didn’t always recover from. The quitting in the Cake Tin was a massive red flag as was the nature of the collapse in Twickenham.

2) players constantly looked out of place throughout the two years and this got worse over time.

3) expected in Y1, but in Y2, these were mixed in with the two aforementioned collapses that were definitely more than just sloppiness. These are more inexcusable in Y2 than Y1, especially because at the start of Y2, you’re expecting to see lessons learned from Y1.

4) Holland looked great, Ratima serviceable, but far too many just got token game time (e.g. Love, Hotham, Darry) with some looking way out of their depth (e.g. McAlister). Other years this would be harder to do but they had the French C team, Fiji game, Wales and Italy to try them out but didn’t do enough.

5) messy for most of Y1, regressed and looked even more uncomfortable in Y2. Close losses to SA in the 2024 RC led to 1 win (helped massively by Eden Park being Eden Park) and the worst loss in test history.

We now head into the final stretch of the season and this is where we get a better look at the rebuild’s progress (before seeing how it looks at the start of next year). In some ways, losing Ardie for the season might be a good thing in the long term because it forces other leaders to emerge from the vacuum (which was going to be difficult at the end of a long tour against the team like the Boks)

Great series, the AB’ will always be our greatest rivals and for good reason. Look forward to our next meeting. Great rugby and great series.

Thanks boys.

3–1. In the end, the most logical prediction proved to be the correct one. The Boks had more gas as the series went on, while the Blacks had a little less in the tank.

There’s still work to be done… but the foundations are good.

Let’s don’t see BB or Rieko in an AB jersey again

As much as I am disappointed with the outcome of the series, it is Rennie’s first year as the Head Coach so I hope the AB’s can only build from this 🖤