Coach Jacques Nienaber was right when he tried to play down his team’s emphatic win over the All Blacks by reminding everyone they did not get a World Cup point from it, but there was no denying the Springboks did make a massive point under the Twickenham lights.
And that point is that when their forwards bring their A-game, there is no way the Kiwis will be able to live with them. In many ways it was a return in London to the narrative of pre-Mbombela last year, with the South Africans smashing the All Blacks at forward, which leaves the Kiwis facing a difficult question - how do you overturn the obvious Bok superiority up front.
There are many different ways to look at the resounding 35-7 win that could easily have been even more one-sided and could, with a bit more fortune for the Boks, have gone close to the 57-0 win the Kiwis managed when the South Africans were under a different coaching group in Albany in 2017.
Firstly, you can only really get an accurate idea of what a warmup game result means if you are in the heads of both teams. There was a lot of debate in New Zealand last week about the wisdom of playing the Boks in a warmup game just two weeks before the real thing. The fears were founded, but from a morale perspective rather than the injury fears that drove the debate.
Tyrell Lomax’s injury would have been a concern to All Black coach Ian Foster when he went down, but it was because of a gash to the knee, which can heal. What is going to be harder to heal is the blow to the Kiwi pride and confidence.
MAYBE IT WAS A MISTAKE FOR ABs TO PLAY THIS GAME
Perhaps it was a mistake by the All Blacks to accept this game. Maybe the Scots had it right in playing Georgia as a vague replication of the South African approach. For what is not debatable is that if you are a player who might be in two minds about risking yourself two weeks before a World Cup, the Boks in the kind of mood they were in on Friday is the last team you’d want to play against.
Smashed in the tackle and at the collisions from the off, and dominated by the Bok forwards from the moment the game started, the All Blacks, who might have felt they lay down a marker against these opponents in Auckland six weeks ago and therefore had less to prove, were reduced to a dishevelled mess.
Suddenly it was no longer the All Black team that had appeared to be on an upward rise since the second half of last year’s Castle Lager Rugby Championship. They’d gone back to being the side that lost a series at home to Ireland.
Make no mistake, the All Blacks do remain contenders. There is too much individual talent in their team to be written off as they can produce an 80 minute performance that can beat any team anywhere on a given day. And their forward play has improved since Jason Ryan, formerly of Crusaders, came in as the assistant coach.
That improvement started in the week after the Boks thumped the Kiwis in Nelspruit on 6 August last year. The All Black forwards stood up in Johannesburg seven days later and pulled off a major upset.
TWICKENHAM THUMPING WAS COMING FOR A WHILE
But mention of Nelspruit cues the point the Boks made at Twickenham: What happened to New Zealand in their final warmup game has been coming for a while if you remember the statement Siya Kolisi’s men made at the Mbombela Stadium. In essence what the London match did was erase the two results that came in the games between Nelspruit and Twickenham and return us to the narrative of last August.
And the point the Boks made two days ago was all related to their forward power and dominance, and the Kiwi ability to contain it. The Bok pack was a bit off in the return game against New Zealand in Johannesburg last August, and the coach, with the bigger picture in mind, had fiddled with his selections. Malcolm Marx, the man of the match from the week before, played off the bench, while Joseph Dweba, a relative rookie at international level, started.
Duane Vermeulen is by no means a rookie and right now the veteran is heading back to his best form and looking formidable. But when he was picked to start 12 months ago he virtually came in cold, and even admitted before that game he might be underdone for a test match.
The message drummed out in London was that when the Boks don’t fiddle with selections and when the forwards bring their A game, the All Blacks can’t live with them. And that is why we have returned to the narrative of pre Mbombela - not playing South African players regularly in Super Rugby has hurt New Zealand.
Aside from their one game against the Boks in Auckland, where most of the South Africans were short of a gallop in the first minutes of their international season whereas the All Blacks had faced Argentina the previous week and had also just finished Super Rugby, New Zealand hadn’t beaten many big opponents on their 11 match unbeaten run.
They drew with England on an end of year tour last November that was nowhere near as challenging as the trip the Boks undertook at the same time, with Wales being their only other top tier opponents. Otherwise it has been a diet of games against mostly Australia (the Pumas were underdone when they met at the start of the Championship), who at this point really can’t test New Zealand in the same way that South Africa, France or Ireland can.
BOK POINT WAS MADE BEFORE THE RED CARD
Even before Scott Barrett was red carded and left the field to leave his teammates at 14 men, the Bok point had been made. The All Blacks aren’t Liverpool, or perhaps more pointedly the Boks aren’t Newcastle, so they were never going to win once they were a man down, but they were already being caned before they were at a disadvantage in numbers.
In my preview to the game on Friday morning, the memory of getting it horribly wrong when predicting the result of the game at Mount Smart prompted me to sit on the fence. “It will be a close game” appeared as my prediction. At Mount Smart though the Boks were rusty. In this game there was a trade in situation, for many of the All Blacks hadn’t played since the first Bledisloe game a month ago.
When, as should now be anticipated, these two teams meet again in a mid-October quarterfinal, it will be the first time this year the playing field is completely level. However, the point made by the Bok forwards really started at the end of the first 20 minutes of the Rugby Championship game. The All Blacks were too far ahead to be caught, and a deficit of 17 points left the Boks with too much to do, but their forwards dominated the last hour. They really are too good for the New Zealand eight when they bring their A-game, and anyway they don't have just eight but 14 or even 15 if you factor in the Bomb Squad, and it is why the Boks should be overwhelming favourites if or when these sides meet again with a lot more on the line.
