There’s a data set beginning to emerge in the wake of the Covid-induced Super Rugby split that says the All Blacks are struggling to adjust to life in their South Seas bubble.
Breaking up Super Rugby and sending the South Africans provinces into the arms of the United Rugby Championship has hurt New Zealand more than anyone imagined.
The numbers tell quite the story. Between 2016 and 2019, when Super Rugby included South African teams as well as the Jaguares from Argentina, the All Blacks won 87 per cent of their tests.
The different styles of rugby that New Zealand’s players were exposed and the different size and shapes of the various athletes with whom they had to battle, built a level of technical craft in all the collision aspects of the game.
In this same period, the All Blacks played the Springboks eight times and beat them on six occasions, drawing once and losing a sole fixture in 2018, and Super Rugby may have had innumerable faults back then with lop-sided scheduling and ridiculously burdensome travel requirements, but it was undoubtedly preparing New Zealand’s players to thrive in the test arena against all-comers.
Since 2021 – time in which Super Rugby has been rescoped into a Pacific competition featuring only teams from New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and by extension Tonga and Samoa funnelled into Moana Pasifika – the All Blacks have a win ratio of 69 per cent.
They have played South Africa eight times in this period and only won three, while their record against Ireland, the next best and most physical side on the planet, the All Blacks have only won once in four games.
They haven’t beaten France on the two occasions they have played them since Super Rugby split, and there is no question that the All Blacks are battling now in a way they weren’t in the last few years before the pandemic changed the world.
For much of the last cycle, the New Zealand media and public believed former All Blacks head coach Ian Foster was the central problem in the declining form of the national team.
But six tests into the Scott Robertson coaching era and his results look much the same as Foster’s – the All Blacks are on a 66 per cent win ratio on his watch – and the same underlying problem is as prevalent now as it was throughout the last cycle.
The All Blacks remain supremely well-equipped to beat the likes of Australia, Scotland, Wales and (usually) Argentina, but when they encounter teams such as South Africa, Ireland, France and England, who have ample power athletes and play an anaerobic style of rugby, they have been found wanting.
What is now undeniable following the South Africa’s 31-27 victory at Ellis Park, is that the All Blacks have a power problem – as in they lack it.
It’s not a glaring deficiency as such, but the loss in Johannesburg was yet another example of the All Blacks being exposed as lacking the collective skill-sets, technical proficiency and sheer size to cope with the collision and breakdown power of the best teams.
The All Blacks remain supremely well-equipped to beat the likes of Australia, Scotland, Wales and (usually) Argentina, but when they encounter teams such as South Africa, Ireland, France and England, who have ample power athletes and play an anaerobic style of rugby, they have too often been found wanting.
This was the case in the Foster era – he eventually found a way to power up his side in 2023 by using his three lock rotation system involving Scott Barrett, Sam Whitelock and Brodie Retallick, by getting the best out of the 1.96m, 115kg Shannon Frizell on the blindside and utilising the post contact running power of hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho.
By the latter rounds of the World Cup, the All Blacks were able to at least stand up to the raw power of the Springboks, but it took the better part of two years for them to get to that point, and now that Whitelock and Retallick have retired, Frizell is in Japan and Taukei’aho is injured, they have regressed on the physical front.
The final quarter of the test at Ellis Park made depressingly familiar viewing for All Blacks fans.
The All Blacks were in the contest up until the last 15 minutes, and for 65 minutes they had shown that they had the higher individual skill-sets, greater awareness about how to create and exploit space and a natural ability to use the ball.
But once the Springboks had their bomb squad on and the All Blacks had to empty their bench to respond, the game changed entirely.
Suddenly the All Blacks couldn’t stop the Springboks rolling maul. They couldn’t shift the jacklers at the breakdown, couldn’t knock the big South African ball carriers back or cope with the sheer physical onslaught to which they were subjected.
Super Rugby was once a rich tapestry of styles and athletes, but now it is a mostly aerobic, ball-in-hand, speed game where all 12 teams, with the exception maybe of the Blues, play a similar style.
South Africa simply powered their way to two tries because the All Blacks couldn’t stop them legally, so they infringed and fell into a repeat cycle where the Boks would win a penalty, maul, win a penalty, maul and so on.
As Robertson said to explain what went wrong: “It’s obviously the discipline stuff, a bit of kick battle, small moments and the game changed just a little bit of momentum.
“Then off the back of that with a bit of discipline, all those things combined, really.”
The style of rugby the All Blacks encountered in South Africa looked nothing like anything on offer in Super Rugby.
The size and body shapes of the Springboks were nothing like the size and body shapes they encounter in Super Rugby and herein lies the problem.
Super Rugby was once a rich tapestry of styles and athletes, but now it is a mostly aerobic, ball-in-hand, speed game where all 12 teams, with the exception maybe of the Blues, play a similar style.
Intercept by Jordie Barrett 🔥#RSAvNZL #AllBlacks pic.twitter.com/kRO9YOQsSw
— All Blacks (@AllBlacks) August 31, 2024
It’s not a bad brand of rugby by any means, but it does create a massive culture shock when the All Blacks get to South Africa or Europe and encounter a different level of power in the collision and different appetite for the set-piece.
Again, as Robertson said before heading to South Africa for the Rugby Championship: “It’s a different challenge. They are set-piece orientated but they can get you into a great kick battle and pressure you in different ways it is a little bit different to Lautoka or playing at Suncorp.
“There is the conditions and all the other factors that come with it.”
One of Super Rugby’s weaknesses most specifically manifested in the All Blacks back-row selection as they effectively picked three opensides at Ellis Park – Ethan Blackadder, Sam Cane and Ardie Savea.
The All Blacks don’t have an athlete the size and shape of Pieter-Steph du Toit, with the athleticism and mobility to flit so easily between the second row and back row.
There’s some truth to the argument that this was strategic – a decision to pick a trio who could support the All Blacks’ intent to play a high-tempo game to run the bigger South Africans about, but there is a stronger case to be made that this combination was picked in the absence of more compelling alternative options.
One of the great failings of the current set-up in New Zealand is that it is producing a generic cohort of loose forwards who are all physically similar and designed to play a similar style of fast, transition rugby.
The All Blacks don’t have an athlete the size and shape of Pieter-Steph du Toit, with the athleticism and mobility to flit so easily between the second row and back row.
They have previously used Scott Barrett on the blindside, but their current lack of options at lock don’t make that a viable option, and this is partly why the selectors are keen to cultivate and develop the 1.95m, 114kg Samipeni Finau at No 6.
Finau is a different body shape entirely to the rest of the loose forwards in the All Blacks squad and equipped with genuinely explosive power, but he’s struggled to take his Super Rugby form into the test arena.
The All Blacks will be able to fix some of their power issues this year when Blues captain Patrick Tuipulotu and Highlanders captain Ethan de Groot return from injury, and will be helped again when Taukei’aho returns from his ripped Achilles next year, and potentially, Shannon Frizell could return from Japan.
But learning the dark arts and building the requisite skills and abilities to cope with the bigger, anaerobic athletes dominating the world game will remain the primary challenge for the All Blacks throughout this World Cup cycle, because Super Rugby is no longer doing that for them.
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