LONG READ 'South Africa can widen the All Blacks' previously unseen faultlines'

It’s a little dramatic and cliched but there is no other way to frame what lies ahead as the All Blacks’ moment of truth.

Having won three successive July Tests under new coach Dave Rennie, the All Blacks now face an eight-game tour of South Africa featuring four matches against the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls and Lions, and four Tests against the Springboks – three in the Republic and one in Baltimore, USA.

The tour is being marketed under the tagline The Greatest Rivalry and is the focal point of the 2026 season. It’s a nostalgic throwback and a test-the-waters play to see if there is fan appetite for an old-fashioned tour of this nature.

But while the tour may lead to further recalibration of the international programme in the southern hemisphere, it will have the much greater, obvious short-term significance of providing the All Blacks with precise information about where they truly sit in the world order, how effective the component parts of their game are and how much has to be rebuilt or refined before the World Cup next year.

With the greatest respect to France, Italy and Ireland who were all beaten by New Zealand in July, none posed anywhere near the same intensity of challenge as playing the Springboks in South Africa.

France, as well as they played, were without their star contingent of Toulouse and Montpellier players, Italy were defiant but without the quality they needed, and Ireland looked flat and a little out of sorts at the end of a long season for them.

The All Blacks showed they are an improving team, but as Rennie says: “It’s a different beast, South Africa. They put a B side out last week that beat an excellent Scotland team.”

And he is 100 per cent right about South Africa. The Boks have only lost four of their 32 Tests since winning the 2023 World Cup and are currently on a 12-game unbeaten run.

The last team to beat them was the All Blacks last September at Eden Park, but that feels like a long, long time ago. The following week after losing in Auckland, the Springboks inflicted a record defeat on New Zealand

They have, to some extent, re-written the rules of Test rugby in that they can pick just about any combination from 50 players and still be lethal.

They also have such a vast arsenal of weaponry to make them an impossibly difficult team to shut down, and everyone acknowledges right now, playing the Springboks in South Africa is harder and unlike any other challenge in the global game.

The last team to beat them was the All Blacks last September at Eden Park, but that feels like a long, long time ago. The following week after losing in Auckland, the Springboks inflicted a record defeat on New Zealand – 43-10 – and perhaps illustrated the true size of the gap between the teams.

Since then, the All Blacks have ousted Scott Robertson as head coach, brought in Rennie and his new crew of assistants and set about trying to give the team a more structured attack, a stronger identity and a more empowered and mature leadership group.

After three games there is no doubt the All Blacks have improved. They have the multi-option attack they were looking for – an ability to use power athletes such as Patrick Tuipulotu and Asafo Aumua to smash round the edge of rucks or have a legion of runners work off the exceptional distribution and decision-making prowess of Jordie Barrett.

They also now understand how to use a kicking strategy to implement their running game – that is, using the boot to pressure the opposition into kicking it back to create counter-attack opportunities.

The pace they played at against Ireland was at times off the charts and the 40-21 defeat of the world’s number three team was done with enough brutality in the collision, soft skills and strategic application that the All Blacks look a significantly better chance of doing well in South Africa than they did 10 months ago.

“I’m really excited,” Rennie said of the upcoming tour. “We’ve worked hard and put a lot of detail into our game. The boys have embraced it.

“We’re in a good spot. It will be nice to have a week off for most of the guys who have had big years, then we’re into it for seven more weeks.

“We’ll go over there and give it our best shot. We’ll come out of Africa, regardless of results, in a much better place. We’ll know a lot more about the boys and our game, the detail within that. We’ll be able to hone our culture. We’ve got a captive audience for seven weeks, so we’ll make the most of that.”

There is little doubt the Boks will weaponise their scrum for the series – ramp up the horsepower, load the bench with seven forwards and try to elongate each set-piece to win penalties.

Rennie’s excitement about what lies ahead is understandable, but the All Blacks have come out of their July programme with several questions about their readiness to play the Springboks hanging over them.

The first is the quality of their set-piece work and particularly, the robustness of their scrum. The question has to be asked whether the All Blacks have the depth of personnel, the technical expertise and mental strength to effectively scrummage against the Boks for 80 minutes.

There is little doubt the Boks will weaponise their scrum for the series – ramp up the horsepower, load the bench with seven forwards and try to elongate each set-piece to win penalties.

It’s an age-old formula that has worked so well for them. Forget how they played in July – when they encounter their oldest foe, the DNA kicks in and they will see the scrum as the key battleground. There is no escaping the cold, hard fact the All Blacks can’t fall victims to their power game if they want to win the series.

The All Blacks had parity with the French scrum, got nothing at all out of the Italians and were marginally on top of the Irish, but never managed to really buckle them. They seem to have settled on Ethan de Groot as the leading loosehead, with Xavier Numia behind him and on the other side, Tyrel Lomax and Fletcher Newell are one and two. An injury to Codie Taylor has thrown a little doubt on who the two hookers will be, but Aumua and Samisoni Taukei’aho bring scrummaging heft as well as ball-carrying punch.

There is a quartet of powerful locks in Tuipulotu, Tupou Vaa’i, Sam Darry and Fabian Holland if he recovers from injury, and Josh Lord showed in July he is not a scrummaging lightweight.

But is there enough muscle, nous and raw desire in the tight five to at least ensure the scrum is a steady and reliable platform and not a source of South African penalties? It feels like an injury to any of the four first choice props and the All Blacks might struggle to keep their scrum competitive. The next cabs off the rank are George Bower at loosehead and Pasilio Tosi at tighthead – neither of whom had much game time in July. Given the likelihood of injuries in South Africa, these two could easily find themselves involved in the series and right now it’s the great unknown whether the All Blacks will be able to survive the ‘Bomb Squad’.

The other unknown is whether their defensive structure will be smart enough to shut down a South African team that can hammer the fringes with a legion of oversized ball carriers, but also now play with width and get the ball to a back three with searing pace and agility.

Against France the All Blacks were mostly passive and against Italy, they didn’t get the double-up numbers in the tackle they were hoping for. The performance against Ireland was more physical and better executed strategically with the plan to push up from the outside and cut off Ireland’s pass to the wings. There was a bit more bite in the collisions, too, with Ireland’s big ball carriers unable to get much joy when they tried to run over defenders in the middle of the field.

“If I can compare where our defence was against France compared to where it is tonight [against Ireland], Tana [defence coach Umaga] and his group have done a massive amount of work and we’re starting to get a bit of a response there,” Rennie said.

Other facets of the All Blacks’ game will be tested by South Africa more rigorously than they were in July. The Boks will see if the All Blacks can catch high balls, if Luke Jacobson is as tough as Rennie says he is and whether Ruben Love can cope with a few Springbok forwards getting in his face.

The reality for the All Blacks is everything they know may have to be reconsidered and revamped in South Africa as the Boks could find faultlines and expose all sorts of previously unrealised weaknesses.