'Humble pie': Neil Barnes on Springboks' dominant set-piece display

All Blacks assistant coach Neil Barnes isn’t hiding away from the Springboks’ set-piece dominance in Soweto, admitting he and scrum coach Jason Ryan have work to do.

The All Blacks fell to their second straight defeat for the first time since 2024, and their second loss under new head coach Dave Rennie, who has now coached the All Blacks in six Tests and four midweek games.

Rennie’s side will look to level the four-Test series in Baltimore this weekend, as they stare down the barrel of a 3-1 series defeat at the hands of the back-to-back World Champions.

The All Blacks, as they were in the first 55 minutes of the first Test in Johannesburg, were dominated at scrum time, highlighted by the home side’s penalty try late in the first 40 minutes.

Despite holding onto their own ball when feeding the scrum, the All Blacks struggled to hold the Springboks’ power, giving away several penalties throughout the contest.

Speaking to New Zealand media before boarding a flight to the United States, Barnes addressed the set-piece performance.

“You can’t hide from it? Their set piece is pretty damn dominant, and they get a gravy train of penalties from it,” Barnes admitted.

“So we’re going to have to eat humble pie and be honest in our reviews and be solution–based because we’ve got to go better and be on the other side of that scoreboard.

“I’m not going to say they’re all legit, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to change the perception for the officials as well, so we get a fair rub of the green, but yeah, we’ve got to be solution-based here.

“They’re good at what they do, and we’re going to counter it the rest of our game. Hey, like you said, the scoreboard-it’s tight.

“So yeah, not all on it. We’re not going to beat ourselves up too much, but at the moment it stinks. We’re coming second to this crew, and we tried bloody hard to get the right result for our country and it hurts.”

The former Taranaki head coach explained that the All Blacks must find a way to stop the Springboks, and quickly.

“Well, if you look at our ball, there’s hardly a penalty. The ball comes out and plays, and the mindset over here is your set pieces are there to create penalties to get yourself down the other end of the field,” the forwards coach said in Soweto.

“So, as I said, we’ve got to get solution-based on how to stop this set piece. I didn’t think we did too bad a job today. We’ve got a maul try against us at the end, which hurt pretty bad, but the scrum penalties- we’ve got to find a way to stop it as well.

“So, for both Jason [Ryan] and myself, we’ve got work to do. The rest of the game, yeah, we probably weren’t at our best in the game; our skill set let us down at times when we had them in trouble, we’ll review ourselves tough and make sure we’re better for the next game in Baltimore.

“You’re going to be sometimes on the right side of the ledger and sometimes not. I’ve got to take luck out of it and take officials out of it. We’ve got to be better.”