Rennie identifies the difference-maker in All Blacks' sudden high ball success

A major area of criticism to come the All Blacks‘ way during and following the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series centred on their struggles under the high ball. No such criticism would come their way after 80 minutes of stellar high-ball play at Eden Park on Saturday night.

While the Springboks dominated New Zealand in the contestable kicking contest last month and built significant attacking momentum on the back of it, the boot was well and truly on the other foot in Auckland, with New Zealand deploying a barrage of contestables and winning a huge number of them.

The backline all took turns chasing, with Jordie Barrett and Will Jordan starring in the air against an Australian backline that bettered South Africa in that department just two weeks ago.

But following the match, Dave Rennie’s praise was quickly directed at another aspect of the kicking game when the topic was raised in the post-match press conference.

“I thought Cam (Roigard’s) kicking was excellent and allowed us to put a lot of pressure on,” the coach said. “We kicked a bit more off nine than we have been.

“I think, as you guys know, receiving those kicks is difficult. I think receiving teams are catching one out of four. That’s the nature of the game at the moment.

“Our guys did an excellent job at either winning it in the air or picking up scraps, and so that was a good shift.”

Jordan, who finished the game as captain after Codie Taylor left the field, said “there was plenty of edge in camp throughout the week” as the Kiwis sought to extend their famous Eden Park record and their reign as Bledisloe Cup holders.

On the matter of the high ball, Jordan echoed what has become a common talking point that the game currently rewards the attacking team when kicking short and that adjusting the length of the kicks was a big factor in the Auckland success. He also noted that Jordie Barrett’s efforts to chase longer kicks led to dominant tackles.

“We just stuck to the plan that we’ve had the whole year around the retreat system,” he explained. “I feel that for a lot of the games that we’ve played, it’s worked pretty well. And then, there were a couple in South Africa where it didn’t. I thought we did a good job to stick to that.

“We’ve felt pretty good all year about contesting when we’re going forward, and I thought tonight, Cam did a great job with his kicking game to just pull it back five or so metres just to allow us to get up in the air; the likes of myself, Jordie, and Leroy (Carter).

“It’s always going to be a point of emphasis for us. So, it’s a good win for us tonight, but it’s going to be important moving forward.”