Patrick Tuipulotu reflects on All Blacks' 'mistakes' in Stormers clash

Stand-in All Blacks captain Patrick Tuipulotu has reflected on their 17-point victory at DHL Stadium over the Stormers, where the visitors received three yellow cards.

Anton Lienert-Brown, Simon Parker, and Josh Moorby were all sent to the bin by English referee Karl Dickson, with the All Blacks going down to 13 men at one stage in the first half.

Lienert-Brown was pinged for a high tackle during the first half, Parker infringed during a Stormers lineout drive, and Moorby looked to have stopped a Stormers try on the line, cynically.

The Stormers capitalised initially, scoring through experienced loose-forward Deon Fourie when Dave Rennie’s All Blacks were two players short.

But the All Blacks scored a late flurry of tries in the second half to clinch victory over the Stormers, including five-pointers from Rieko Ioane, Asafo Aumua, and Moorby.

Rennie’s side lost 15 turnovers in Cape Town, and missed 20 tackles, highlighting how difficult the Stormers were to break down.

Tuipulotu, captaining the side for the second time in his career, was quick to give credit to the Stormers, who put the All Blacks under enormous amounts of pressure throughout the 80 minutes.

“Yeah, I think we come into this game knowing full well that the Stormers would be very physical and throw everything at us and be set piece dominant, and that’s what they did,” Tuipulotu told Sky Sport post-match.

“But I think credit to the Stormers, they managed to obviously test our discipline, get a lot of penalties, end up in our half, and make us defend quite a bit.”

The Blues enforcer admitted his side were far from their best, explaining what the messaging was from the All Blacks coaching staff.

“They put a lot of pressure on us. We made a lot of mistakes tonight, and a lot of the messaging was around trying to keep our discipline, as well as try to play, keep the ball in hand.

“It’s an 80-minute-plus game, so in the end, I think we managed to hold the ball, not give away as many penalties, and think try and tire them out.

“So I think for us, there’s a lot to learn from that, and in terms of resilience and trying to stay in the game. But I think we’ve got to be happy with how the Stormers played and tested us.

“So we’ll take that as a start of our tour.”