The 'massive challenge' separating All Blacks and Springboks transitions

It’s a season of transition for the global rugby south, with all four Rugby Championship nations entering the annual competition with new coaching groups.

Michael Cheika has stepped away from Argentina, Ian Foster has been replaced in New Zealand, Eddie Jones was cast aside in Australia and Jacques Nienaber has moved on from South Africa.

While it’s the Kiwis looking to defend their TRC crown once more, it’s again the South Africans who enter the competition as reigning world champions.

It’s also the Springboks facing the biggest on-field transition. The core group who have brought the nation two World Cup wins since 2019 are too old to make another run in 2027, meaning the team must unearth a new generation of world-beaters during this World Cup cycle.

It’s something that was highlighted by Simon Strachan of Gainline Analytics, someone who studies and specialises in cohesion analytics.

“The interesting thing about South Africa, they’ve had this advantage of having this core group together for such a long period of time because they brought them together at the same time,” Strachan told the Aotearoa Rugby Pod.

“Now, they’re going to have this situation where they’re going to have to transition that group in a big chunk and that is a massive challenge for them. How they transition that group towards 2027.

“I think it’s been acknowledged, even Rassie acknowledged it, they aimed for 2023 and the 2019 World Cup was almost a bonus for them. They were absolutely competitive then but they won it.

“But how they transition into 2027 is really critical for them.”

Strachan dived into some more detail on the All Blacks transition under Scott Robertson, highlighting the importance of pacing out the transition period.

“It’s a case of let’s transition into what we want to do without making a massive amount of shift. Because, if you change the way you’re playing and you change the players, it’s going to be chaos. You don’t know necessarily what’s not working, and so I think there is a transition of the way they play, the All Blacks, and there’s going to be a transition of players at the moment.

“It’s going to be a bit scratchy and it has been a bit scratchy to start with, but you’re always going to expect that. It’s a case of understanding what you have and making decisions around that going forward. Part of that is at what time are you going to make that transition?”