Ex-SA coach on the 3 things Springboks must fix before facing All Blacks

Nick Mallett has identified three areas South Africa can “definitely get better” in before facing the All Blacks, with the former Springboks head coach calling for improvements in their lineout, attack and contestable kicking.

South Africa edged Argentina 17-10 in Buenos Aires on Saturday in their final match before their attention turns to New Zealand and the Greatest Rivalry.

The victory at Estadio José Amalfitani was far from flawless, with Los Pumas making life uncomfortable for the world champions for large periods before the visitors eventually secured the win following a nervey final play.

Speaking on journalist Brenden Nel’s Talking Boks podcast, Mallett praised South Africa’s scrum and defence but highlighted the areas he believes need improvement against the All Blacks.

The Greatest Rivalry gets underway at Ellis Park on Saturday, August 22, with South Africa now having a week to sharpen those areas.

“If we just look at the positives out of the game,” the former Bok boss said. “I think continuing our scrum dominance against everyone, that was really good to see. Although there weren’t many scrums in the game, I think we had seven on our ball.

“And the second thing was the defence. We do talk, and I was a bit critical and have been critical about the fluidity of the attack and the inability to offload, except in the try in the 39th minute, where I thought both [Andre] Esterhuizen and Canan Moodie did wonderfully well. That was a beautiful bit of sleight of hand.

“We were very blunt, very direct, and we often got double hits and double tackles just because we were one-off runners. But when they had the ball and they did move it around nicely, our defence was well set all the time. We really were well organised, and our scramble defence – we pressed hard, but if they did play deeper and get it out wide, we had enough players from inside to press and shift late.

“I was really impressed that last [period], where they had 16, 17 phases in our 22, not to give a penalty, another penalty away there, and to make some very, very good hits to actually knock them back away from our try line was a positive.

“So two things: defence and scrum. I think we can get better in our lineouts. I think we can definitely get better with our attack, and we need to improve our contestables.Because playing the All Blacks, they’re areas of the game that were their areas of the game that were weak against the Stormers were scrums, maul defence and contestables in particular.

“The Stormers, when they managed to get from set piece to set piece, the All Blacks didn’t look as though they enjoyed that at all. They wanted a quick, fast-flowing game, and so we need to get our contestable kicking back on point. That is a very strong area of our game that was way off this last weekend.”