Blunder Boks and the most damning of Eden Park statistics

Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Published on 7th September 2025 | Leave a response

The Boks statistics from their 24-17 defeat against the All Blacks at Eden Park make for shocking reading, writes Mark Keohane.

The Boks made 12 entries into the All Blacks 22, as opposed to the two of the hosts.

The Boks line out success was 78 percent and the tackle success 72 percent.

The Boks won just three turnovers and conceded eight.

Gregor Paul, in the NZ Herald, wrote of how the Boks line out struggled. So did I in my Sunday Times overview.

Paul wrote: It wasn’t just that the All Blacks brought tenacity and fight, there was an obvious depth of research apparent in nearly all aspects of their performance – particularly the speed at which they reacted to shut down the Springboks when they tried to set up their famed driving maul.

‘There was both alertness and adeptness early in the first half when the Boks tried to pull off their trick play of an effective middle of the field lineout where they lifted Eben Etzebeth to take a lobbed pad.

‘Both Scott Barrett and Vaa’i read it ahead of time and immediately charged past the ball and came into melee from behind knowing that a maul had not yet been formed.

‘It was a big sign that the All Blacks had done their homework – a non-subliminal message that they were wise to what was in the visitor’s playbook and they weren’t about to let Eden Park be ransacked by a somewhat laboured, gimmick.

In my Sunday Times analysis of the 24-17 defeat, I lamented the lack of line out efficiency, the sub-standard breakdown return and a Bok team more confused than comfortable in an evolving game plan.

No team wins the biggest Test matches without a functioning lineout. No team wins the biggest Test matches without some form of parity at the breakdown. Not even these Super Springboks.

The lineout, as it has done all season, floundered. New Zealand’s, by contrast, operated as if on auto pilot.

It was on Wilco Louw’s introduction on 60 minutes that we saw the scrum mongrel that buckled all opposition in 2023 and 2024.

Why keep the world’s strongest scrumming tighthead on the bench for an hour?

What has changed in the Boks set-up is that attack has replaced defence as a priority and the net returns are negligible and the profits are lacking in the biggest matches, as experienced at Ellis Park and at Eden Park.

South Africa’s greatest lineout exponent Victor Matfield, earlier this week on SuperSport’s Final Whistle, in conversation with former Boks coach Nick Mallett, lamented the state of the Boks lineout.

Once the most functional and superior in international rugby, it is now among the most fragile. The traditional full lineout has been sacrificed to get more forwards among the backs on attack but, to quote both Mallett and Matfield, you first must win the ball, and the Boks are operating 30 percent below the accepted standard.