The All Blacks’ tour of South Africa has produced a series worthy of ‘Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry’. It has been full to the brim with drama and controversy on and off the pitch. Neither side can bear to mention the name of the other without a swear word muttered under the breath. And that is as it should be in the joust between the two greatest rugby nations on God’s green one.
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What are the portents for South Africa and New Zealand on the final march towards a World Cup in Australia in just over 12 months? Has the tour influenced the future of the game for better or worse?
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Who chose the battleground for the RGR series?
Popular legend has it the ‘Iron Duke’ had surveyed the field of Waterloo a whole year before the climactic battle in June 1815. He had made his plans well before Napoleon even thought of escaping from exile on the isle of Elba.
“He who occupies the high ground and the sunny side will fight to advantage,” said the Chinese philosopher/warrior Sin Tzu, and Springbok head coach Rassie Erasmus unquestionably won the battle to fight the series on his own terms. Before the series ever started, RugbyPass created the following table as a rough guide to the differences in how both teams wanted to play the game.
South Africa are most comfortable with low ball-in-play, a staccato play-in-explosive-bursts scenario. At the Nations Championship, Dave Rennie’s All Blacks had established they wanted far higher ball-in-play time, to run their opponents off their feet with the sheer volume of attacking rucks and lightning-quick ball derived from them.
What happened when the two worlds clashed in the RGR series?
There was only one team sitting on the high ground and enjoying the sunshine, and that was South Africa. The series was played out on a battleground of the Springbok supremo’s choosing, with the average ball-in-play time dropping well below the Nations Championship average of just over 37 minutes per game, and a massive six and a half minutes underneath the standard New Zealand had set in the same competition.
The Springboks don’t mind playing without the ball in low ball-in-play games, but seven and half minutes less active time-of-possession, and 46 fewer rucks really matter when you want to play a high-tempo possession game.
As the stats suggest, the contest at the breakdown increased markedly from World Rugby’s new showcase event in July, and that suited the Boks more than the All Blacks too. Where the Kiwis were turning over one ball in every 70 rucks at the Nations Championship, they were leaking one in every 23 during the RGR series.
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Who improved more over the second half of the series?
Halfway through the series, this article examined the big plusses and minuses for both teams with two Tests to play and the series balanced at one win apiece. South Africa had clear areas of superiority, as demonstrated in the below table.
Although the gap narrowed at the lineout and in the overall penalty count, the Springboks preserved a healthy advantage at scrum time, and in the aerial game, and New Zealand did not do enough to reduce the shortfall at either. The Springboks scored from a long-range lineout drive to win the third Test, while refereeing perceptions at scrum-time in Soweto and Baltimore remained the same as they were at Ellis Park and in Cape Town.
By way of contrast, South Africa made some major strides over the course of the last two matches, having lagged behind their foes in several key metrics as the first table below indicates.
The Springboks made huge inroads, clearing the minefields of All Black domination over the first two Tests. They reversed the scoring pattern in the last half-hour of games, and all but doubled their ratio of line-break conversions. They even started scoring tries from outside the red zone for the first time in the series!
If there was one reason above all South Africa beat New Zealand by three Tests to one, that was it. Their coaches and players understood the areas that needed to be fixed halfway through the series, and others where they had to stay ahead of their rivals, with more clarity than the opposition.
It will leave the All Blacks coaching panel disheartened rather than crushed. The tourists still scored more tries than the Springboks, at an average of over four tries per game while creating more line-breaks against the vaunted blitz defence, and they remain more capable than the world champions of scoring from positions outside the opposition 22 consistently.
Ultimately, they wounded the Bok but were unable to make the kill. As assistant coach Neil Barnes told Jason Pine on Newstalk ZB: “For anybody that understands the game, [the gap between the teams is] not very far at all.
“To be fair, I’ve got a Bud Light sitting in my hand at the moment that I’m chewing through, so obviously disappointed. But the more I reflect, the more I know we’re seriously close to them [the Springboks].
“Probably just not getting the rub of the green, or getting a lot of luck in close moments at the moment. They’re probably, you’re fair to say the better team tonight [in Baltimore].
“But holy hecka, like there’s a couple of moments of swinging with about 20 minutes to go, where two or three times in a row we come out on the wrong side of a close call.”
Amen to that.
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The series raised some interesting questions around the future of the game. Barnes again: “Sometimes you know you get a bounce or something like that, but yeah, there’s definitely a couple of decisions in there that could have gone either way.
“I thought we made a big shift in our set-piece tonight compared to what happened last week, so that was good.
“But at the end of the day, they actually played with some freedom tonight because they were one up in the series, so they couldn’t lose it. And good on them, I thought it was a good game of rugby.
“We’ve got to be in a position where we can actually control the game for longer with the speed of it, fatigue them more. But every time they keep getting penalties for b****r-all and get to slow the game down, it brings them back into it.”
To get an idea of what Barnes means, take a look at the following refereeing analysis for the RGR series.
All three of the Europe-based officials [Matthew Carley in the first Test, Nika Amashukeli in the third and Karl Dickson in fourth] refereed against type, at least in comparison to the approach they take in their domestic leagues. Between them, the trio shaved an average of five minutes off their typical ball-in-play time while blowing the whistle for penalties on six extra occasions per game.
The only Super Rugby Pacific representative on the panel, Australian Angus Gardner, produced a similar ball-in-play time to his Nations Championship performance, while blowing seven fewer penalties.
Gardner paid close attention to the brake foot of both hookers and the head position of all four props at the scrum. He showed the patience of a saint, calling for four successive resets in the 44th minute of the second Test before free-kicking the Boks on the fifth.
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 14, 2026
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 14, 2026
These are the actions of a man who does not want to sanction the scrum if he can possibly help it. By the beginning of the fourth Test, there had been a big change in officiating atmosphere.
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 14, 2026
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 14, 2026
Englishman Karl Dickson is happy to first free-kick, then penalise New Zealand hooker Codie Taylor immediately, even though he doesn’t appear to withdraw his brake foot before Malcolm Marx on the opposite side of the tunnel. As TV commentator and ex-Bok hooker Hanyani Shimange observed after the third reset in Cape Town, “if this one doesn’t complete, he [Gardner] is going to have to make a decision”.
There remain issues at the scrum which the referee cannot be expected to judge in real time, but the RGR series has promoted the possibility of longer tours and rugby could be all the better for it.
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Bhatti has broken his arm vs Glasgow . . . . Any chance we can take Van Wyk back on loan this season?? 🤣🤣🤣
You started so well, Nick. Unfortunately, you then fell for the Kiwi trick of blaming the refereeing. What a pity!
The biggest gap is not in these stats. The biggest gap is in the top two inches, which can’t be coached and only comes with winning from tight spots.
Cordwell was always a clever lad, so I think he went full time to see how it would go but I recall he had a chance to join a start up business, so went for that and retired early.
He’s the gap that we are currently feeling as he would have been the perfect understudy to Beno at this stage.
Yes Whitcombe and Cordwell are both interesting what ifs?
Whticombe looked solid at Welford Road, while Cordwell looked to have starter and even poss international potential written all over him.
The ABs biggest score - 47 v Italy - coincided with the ABs highest passing numbers. But it was not their most efficient performance when all inputs are counted. I mentioned before that PCM / pass seemed to be a key performance indicator. And the relationship between PCMs and passes is not clear - and it would take a much better brain than mine to work that out. But simply increasing the passes by itself wont necessarily improve efficiency but it may result improvements elsewhere including PCM and less tackling.
Ps what do you mean by +1?
We’ve struck gold at THP with TdT, Will Stuart (who got much better at Bath), Archie & Billy but we’ve actually struggled on the other side of the scrum.
People will quickly forget we struggled at LHP (probably since Nick Auterac left) and went through Lewis Boyce & Val Morozov before we landed on Van Wyk as the perfect LHP bench role and found that balance.
Having the option to play Beno/Tdt or TdT/Stuart gave us an extra combo in the front row and we’ve basically lost our best THP and 2nd best LHP in one person, whilst also losing Van Wyk, having lost Arthur Cordwell who would have been hitting his prime if he stayed in the game at this stage and was the natural replacement to Van Wky (that’s what happens when you sign an physicist as LHP 🤣🤣).
Backing the Academy is fine but once you lose that player slot (like Cordwell’s retirement at 24), it’s not easy to suddenly fill that slot any longer, especially at prop where they take a bit longer to come through.
I’m actually surprised nobody came in for James Whitcombe, he looked pretty good coming through at Tigers and the move to Edinburgh has not been a good one, so he may be worth a gamble at some stage. it will be interesting to see how Macko gets on - he would have been an ideal signing to get through this season.
Bath have gone from a Senior squad of 42 to a Senior Squad of 50 this season (with more youngsters). I think they are realising we can’t maintain 2 comps with a squad of 42 and there does seem to be a trend of more younger players added into the cap across clubs this season.
I would love to know what the ‘cost’ of upping your passing game by 100% is, is it worth the extra 3-4 points of efficient for instance? I’d have to think so, given the ABs output didn’t change much right.
Those last two try’s were pretty fortunate though. I’d be inclined to see results tipping the scales +1 to the ABs instead to get an accurate perspective.
We were pretty chuffed to pick up Van Wyk. He’ll play this week…
I think the audience is likely to be a world of 2 😂
Efficiency is by definition a relationship between input and output ie least cost for max output. Naturally there will likely be an inflection point where passing is wasteful. But more passing that leads to more points may be more efficient than less passing that leads to less points. As noted the Boks passed more in the 4th test and scored the most and was overall by far the most efficient of all 4 tests. Conversely the ABs tackled more in the 4th test than any other game!
So yes I definitely believe that ABs game can be both pass intensive and efficient! But needless to say, the Boks goldilocks zone is that go forward game (with some passing!)
Just so the discussion is following a logical flow, getting to a conclusion, and not just random back and forth with two people not realizing the arguing about completely different points 😂
We should all be here to enlighten ourselves as well as others.
Very interesting, thank you. Do you like/are you Rugbyfromthestands? lol
Wait what? So you you don’t put full weight in you efficiency rating, as surely having more passes resulted in less carries and shifted their ‘best formula’ more towards the All Blacks style?
A simple low passing go forward approach certainly has benefits in other areas, and I thnk theres a lot to be said for a holding back before unleashing approach like youve hinted at.
I was surprised we re-signed him. Not the signing I was expecting but the available cupboard is fairly bare at the moment.
The weakness is Bhatti - never been a great scrummager.
No I wouldn’t pick Vaai at 6.
Personally, I think Ollie is a better defender, so I would always put him at 12 in defence but prefer him at 13 in attack, where before the injury he could use his power to hand off the defender and spin out into the open space at 13, which is when he was at his best.
He was as defined when he came back last season but will be interesting to see what condition he is in having had a full pre-season. I know he struggled last season but this year could be very different if they have him back in good shape.
Another example where they rushed a player back too soon and he struggled as a consequence.
Not so thick on the ground HH.
Find another Kieran Read?
That sounds very interesting P, from an Eng POV…
Does that mean Olli still defends at 13 tho?
It is not surprising though that the Boks were most lethal when they passed the most or that they only lost when they were, in short, rusty. The picture of these two teams is that the Boks are just next level in terms of the effectiveness of their systems. A major part of that is they have a settled core of players and patterns of play that make them very difficult to beat. It is also significant that the starting forwards largely remained the same from test 1 to 4, with only the front rows swapping for test 2 while Kolisi replaced de Villiers; and the impact unit was the same from test 2-4. By comparison, the ABs did not have the same starting pack for any of the tests, and it was unrecognisable from test 1 to 4. By contrast it had the same backline for three tests and they were very effective at scoring when they got the ball. For me it is this fundamentally different level of consistency and coherency that best explains the difference in performance. And until NZ can assemble the same core forwards on the paddock in successive tests, all the complex strategies and game theories will mean little.
And just one more point - it is much easier to defend a long open side and a short side than it is to defend two fairly long sides - just as a general theory.
I saw Max Ojomoh last week, they have really put some size into his legs over the summer, he’s much more powerful in the hips & legs (to break tackles). He looks more like a 12 than 13 now, which is how they lined up him and Lawrence in pre-season.
Never Fran.
I would say the respected it. They knew they needed to add another bow to their game to beat the All Blacks.
Oh you’re right, Ardie didn’t play the last game at all did he. I didn’t notice.
In test 4, the Boks physically disrespected the ABs gain line from the first whistle. They played Tony ball, in the rain, within the first 20 seconds.
No Adrie. Even Jordie’s defensive heroics hinged on the fact that Ardie often softened them up first. It's insane kiwis don't even get the value in that lad.
I know the NZ club game is tribal, but it's not like you're trying to objectively admit your aunty is hot! Ardie is utter class.
Vaa'i obviously can't fetch, cause he's 2metres, but the rest is top drawer. 8 to 6 should be working better on the deck. Forget 7, cut out the middle man. That's Ardie’s genius. He'll set them up, you knock them back.
He is possibly the most generous player in the game.