'Never again': Jason Ryan admits scrummaging flaws against Springboks

Jason Ryan has a lot to be happy about after his All Blacks forward pack fronted up physically against the back-to-back world champion Springboks at Eden Park, but the forwards coach knows there’s still work to do.

His forward pack managed to sniff out the danger on multiple occasions on the defensive side of the ball, constantly disrupting the Springboks lineout, while also stopping the 12th minute midfield maul by the away side.

Ryan, whose work with the forward pack over the past two years shouldn’t go unnoticed, was honest about a couple of the scrum mistakes during the highly anticipated encounter at Eden Park.

“Yeah, we were bit messy especially on our ball, we just want to get it out and play to be fair, but there’s one where they climbed into us, we lost our footing, tried to get back up, and it was just too late.

“So that’ll be a never again moment,” Ryan told media at Auckland Airport on Sunday.

When Ryan was asked what exactly went wrong in that moment, he pinpointed the front row’s control as one area to work on.

“Yeah, no, we’ve just gotta be a whole lot better with our control, we slipped, Tyrel Lomax’s foot went down, couldn’t get back up, tried to and then yeah, lost our timing completely but I need to have a better look at that.”

There were some other key defensive plays on a night where the All Blacks kept the Springboks to only three points in the opening 62 minutes.

The much-talked-about Rieko Ioane managed to make a couple of important defensive reads in the second half, most notably holding up Ox Nche just as he was about to place the ball down over the line.

Ryan was short and sharp with his assessment of the 86-Test veteran’s defensive contributions.

“Yeah it was a key moment, outstanding, really instinctive.”

Despite the important victory at Eden Park on Saturday, Ryan still believes that there needs to be some honest conversations about letting the Springboks back into the game.

“You often hear the saying that pressure is a privilege, but really as fresh as a lifestyle, when you’re in the All Blacks and it’s just the way it’s got to be.

“At Eden Park there was a lot on that, and there’s a lot on this one as well, but we just got to make sure that we build that edge and some more this week.

“That will start with how we review and just being brutally honest around a couple of opportunities that we let them back in the game.”