LONG READ The data shows Dave Rennie's All Blacks can test the all-conquering Springboks to the max

The greatest rivalry in rugby, All Blacks versus Springboks, is the biggest draw the sport has to offer. With the rapid improvement of the All Blacks under new head coach Dave Rennie allied to the crushing weight of history, it could turn out to be the most searching test of Rassie Erasmus’ coaching career to date.

A deep dive into the raw stats produced by the first three rounds of the Nations Championship only whets the appetite for the seven-week tour of the Republic which begins on 7 August, with a game between the Stormers and the visitors in the shadow of Cape Town’s Table Mountain.

The shape of the game and a bold new statement of Kiwi rugby identity in the Rennie/Sir Graham Henry era suggest the All Blacks are capable of not only mounting a serious challenge to Erasmus’ charges, they could even launch a coup d’état and seize the throne. Now wouldn’t that be something?

The shape of the game

A comparison of the past three major international tournaments north and south of the equator – the 2025 Rugby Championship, the 2026 Six Nations and the 2026 Nations Championship – indicates the overall trend is towards ever more attacking content: more points, more tries, more rucks and fewer penalties. The two most recent tournaments, the Six Nations and Nations Championship, lead the way, torch in hand.

The 12-team Nations Championship includes a wider spread of rugby nations, and more imbalanced match-ups than a regular Six Nations or Rugby Championship. But that only partly explains the increase in scoring profile, and it does not account for the drop in penalty awards or the upsurge in the number of rucks built per game.

There were three and a half minutes more ball-in-play time at the 2026 Six Nations, and one and half more minutes at the Nations Championship compared to the southern hemisphere gold standard, the Rugby Championship. The game is becoming more fluid with every major iteration.

There is also much less of a true contest at the set-piece. Teams at the Rugby Championship were winning 84% of their own lineout ball, at the Six Nations the retention rate rose to 90%, and it increased further to 91% at the Nations Championship. Some 94% of the scrums at the most recent tournament were won by the feeding team, with the balance of penalties and free-kicks also weighing heavily in favour of the side with the put-in.

Scrums remain the bugbear of the professional game, often consuming as much as one fifth of overall game time while only producing clean usable ball on just over 50% of occasions.

Why the All Blacks will be tougher to beat in 2026

 Since the unexpected ascension of ex-Chiefs and Glasgow coach Rennie to the national throne, and the appointment of Henry as his selector-in-chief, the All Blacks have undergone radical surgery and discovered a new playing identity, and that means it will be South Africa having to make most of the adjustments on the Greatest Rivalry tour. Compare the following two tables.

The new sense of New Zealand identity is something to behold. Scott Robertson’s All Blacks were trying to play the Springboks at their own game – very similar ball-in-play time and time of possession, no difference in the number of rucks set or speed of ball delivered from them.

Robertson and forwards coach Jase Ryan favoured the selection of a heavyweight tight five. But with Rennie calling the shots, tight forwards have been asked to drop weight and focus on their skills instead. Asafo Aumua and Ethan De Groot were two of the front rowers who featured in the 40-21 win over Ireland in the third round.

“I know I was eating quite a bit,” Aumua reflected recently. “I was a bit heavy heading into pre-season. But, happy to be back in decent, or good enough, nick to play the game.

“I lied to our nutritionist. I said I was 124kg, but I was actually 126kg. Now I’m 116kg. I was probably just eating too much. I was eating probably double the portions I should have been. But, I’m back to eating properly now.”

De Groot added: “He [Rennie] is allowing us to back skill and have a crack, so yeah, I’m enjoying that side of the game.

“It’s funny because ‘Barnsey’ [assistant coach Neil Barnes] actually gave me s**t for having no skills so I’ve been working hard on trying to prove him wrong with a bit of razzle.”

The results are there in the glaring black and white of the stats: games involving Rennie’s All Blacks have featured five minutes more ball-in-play, seven minutes more active time of possession and 55 more rucks built per game than Robertson’s, while the average ruck speed was one full second quicker at the Nations Championship than it was in the Rugby Championship.

Suddenly the All Blacks are recognisably themselves again. When the hooter sounded to mark the end of proceedings against Ireland, Aumua recalled skipper Ardie Savea’s command – to keep looking for another score. There was going to be no let-up in intensity.

“His message was ‘we’re not going to wind down the clock. We’re going to play.’ It’s been a constant throughout the series as well. Just trying to keep the ball moving, keep it alive. Try not to give the opposition a rest.”

The new firm of ‘Rennie and Ted’ has also taken positive steps to fix two gaping holes in the Razor resumé, the desire to score off turnover ball and a drastic drop-off in performance in the fourth quarter of games.

Where the Springboks are ahead of the game

The New Zealand set-piece still needs fixing. The lineout finished dead last at the Nations Championship with an 83% retention rate, compared to a Springbok set-piece running at 94%, even in the absence of 141-cap veteran Eben Etzebeth and experienced caller Lood de Jager.

Fabian Holland cannot return to national colours quickly enough, with the giant Dutchman having completed a tentative 40-minute stint with Otago in the NPC at the weekend. It was his first taste of rugby since dislocating a shoulder in Super Rugby pre-season on 6^th February. Holland won 36 lineouts at the Rugby Championship last year, 20 more than the top Springbok [Etzebeth] and a dozen more than the next man, Wallaby Nick Frost. Whether he is partnered by Tupou Vaa’I, Josh Lord or Sam Darry, he will be an essential component of Kiwi success in South Africa. It will be a race against time to get him fully fit.

The scrum will be a bone of philosophical contention. Where the All Blacks envisage a restart and a launchpad for multi-phase attack, the Boks will want to use the scrum as a platform to win penalties, score quickly and terminally damage the morale of the opposition.

Ultimately, for all their considerable improvement over the Nations Championship, New Zealand will have to match South Africa’s sheer efficiency at scoring points, and this will be the toughest task of all.

The South African scoring model remains more efficient than New Zealand’s. Although the current All Blacks are creating many more line breaks per carry than Robertson’s side did at TRC 2025, they still need to make as many carries to score a try in 2026 as they did one year previously. The Springbok offence, featuring more kicks and fewer carries, is leaner and more efficient at delivering tries quickly – and it may just have gotten hotter in July.

New Zealand have already established a clear-cut new identity under the auspices of Rennie and Henry. There is no longer any lingering doubt about how the All Blacks want to play the game. As Scotland showed in the second round of the Nations Championship, the new style will be good enough to inconvenience one of the greatest Springbok sides in history. It could even be enough to win a couple of Test matches. Will it be sufficient to carry off the spoils in a series for only the second time in the history of the Greatest Rivalry? The stats tale told at scrum, lineout and in the scoring efficiency table says “probably not”.

But if they can win, these All Blacks will experience the same euphoria as Zinzan Brooke at Loftus Versveld in Pretoria 30 years ago: “I was absolutely knackered on the bloody ground but just thinking, ‘S**t, we’ve done it.’ That was a moment in time where you think, ‘Right, we’ve done it!’ And for me, it just closes a massive door in life.”