Kiwi media hail Springboks as world rugby’s standard

The Springboks 2-1 home series triumph against the All Blacks has drawn a remarkably consistent verdict from New Zealand’s leading rugby voices: South Africa are the benchmark and their power game is unlike anything else in Test rugby.

And, when the pressure was greatest, the world champions imposed themselves on the All Blacks.

The Springboks have won the South African leg of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry 2-1 and the message from New Zealand is not that the All Blacks were disgraced, exposed or hopeless.

It is that the Boks were better.

And, more significantly, that the Springboks remain the team every other nation is chasing.

The All Blacks won 33-16 at Ellis Park, but South Africa responded 33-26 in Cape Town and 29-24 at FNB Stadium to ensure New Zealand’s famed 1996 Incomparables remain the only All Blacks to have won a Test series in South Africa.

The reaction in New Zealand has focused heavily on what the All Blacks need to improve, but within that analysis has been an emphatic acknowledgement of the quality of Rassie Erasmus’s Springboks.

Stuff.co.nz’s Marc Hinton was unequivocal.

When it mattered, he wrote, the Springboks were “too big, too strong and too flaming good”.

Hinton described the Soweto victory as another “clinical, classical, pressure-packed performance” from the back-to-back world champions and said it demonstrated exactly why South Africa remain the side everyone else is chasing.

That was the theme across the Kiwi analysis.

This was not simply about the Boks having bigger forwards. It was about how efficiently South Africa turned their physical advantages into points.

Stuff’s Ross Karl broke down the sequence that has become so brutally effective.

The scrum creates the penalty. The penalty creates the lineout. The lineout creates the maul. And the maul creates the try.

The All Blacks know it is coming. They just haven’t been able to stop it.

Karl highlighted that nine of the Boks’ 12 scrum penalties in the three Tests have come on South Africa’s feed.

When the All Blacks put the ball into the scrum, they have increasingly looked to get it out quickly. When the Boks feed, they are prepared to keep the ball at No 8, feel New Zealand retreat and then turn the scrum into an attacking weapon.

South Africa won five scrum penalties in Soweto.

The most devastating expression of that forward superiority, however, came from Malcolm Marx’s try following a 25-metre maul.

Karl called it one of the defining moments of the Test because it was about much more than seven points.

It created a sense of helplessness.

Once South Africa got the game into the area in which they are strongest, New Zealand could not reliably get out.

That is a huge compliment to this Bok team.

Gregor Paul, writing for the New Zealand Herald, went even further in assessing South Africa’s power game.

Paul argued that every team in world rugby will struggle with it because the Boks are producing physical power “at a scale previously never seen”.

But his most telling assessment concerned the fundamental battle of styles that has made this series so compelling.

The Springboks have built their game around power and the All Blacks around athleticism. South Africa want to dominate the set piece and New Zealand want space. The Boks have heavier, square, immensely powerful forwards, while New Zealand favour lighter and more explosive athletes.

One wants to squeeze. The other wants to stretch.

Paul described it as rugby chess and, after 240 minutes in South Africa, said there could be no argument about which team had imposed its identity for longer.

The answer was definitively the Springboks.

That conclusion matters more than the 2-1 scoreline.

The All Blacks have played some spectacular rugby in the series. They have repeatedly found width against South Africa’s aggressive defensive system and in Soweto produced 12 line breaks and 11 offloads compared with the Boks’ six line breaks and one offload.

Yet the Boks won.

Why?

Because South Africa are comfortable being uncomfortable.

Liam Napier, also writing in the New Zealand Herald, noted that much had been made of the All Blacks’ fitness and their supposed advantage at altitude after they dominated the final 20 minutes of the opening two Tests by an aggregate 26-3.

In Soweto, that script was shredded.

The Boks dominated the second half.

Their defence swarmed, their forwards rumbled and the penalties started flowing. Instead of New Zealand running South Africa off their feet in the final quarter, it was the All Blacks who found themselves on the ropes.

The Springboks’ ability to defend when apparently beaten has also earned significant praise.

Karl wrote that South Africa deserved “enormous credit” for their scramble defence, repeatedly recovering from situations that would probably have produced tries against other teams.

That is important because New Zealand’s attack has been good.

The All Blacks are making breaks. They are finding space. They are moving the Bok defence around.

They simply have not converted enough of those opportunities because the Springboks refuse to die defensively.

And when momentum changes, South Africa punish teams with a brutality few can match.

Hinton identified the Bok midfield of Jesse Kriel and Damian de Allende as outstanding in Soweto, with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu combining control and creativity.

Kurt-Lee Arendse and replacement Manie Libbok were influential, but the foundation came from Malcolm Marx, Jasper Wiese, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Ox Nche.

Hinton’s assessment was simple: the Bok pack won its battles and provided a brilliant platform.

The same respect came from former All Blacks Brad Weber, Angus Ta’avao and Mils Muliaina on Sky Sport’s The Breakdown.

Ta’avao, a 22-Test All Black prop, called South Africa’s scrum the best in the world and stressed that the Boks do not approach a scrum hoping for parity.

They attack it to dominate.

Former All Blacks scrumhalf Weber said New Zealand’s challenge was to keep the ball alive and attempt to run the Boks off their feet. Every handling mistake that gives South Africa another scrum simply invites the world champions back into their preferred form of combat.

And Muliaina made perhaps the most important observation of all.

South Africa do not mind pressure.

They absorb it.

The All Blacks have shown in these three Tests that the gap between the teams is not enormous. At Ellis Park they punished an inaccurate South Africa ruthlessly. In Cape Town they stayed alive until the finish. At FNB Stadium they created more line breaks and attacked with ambition.

But this series has also shown the difference between threatening the champions and displacing them.

The Boks have a scrum that can destroy you, a lineout that rarely gives the ball away, a maul capable of marching 25 metres, a defence that can recover when broken and a playing group conditioned by years of winning the biggest moments in the biggest Tests.

They also know exactly who they are.

The New Zealand media’s verdict after three Tests reflects that reality.

The All Blacks are improving.

The Springboks are still the standard.

HOW THE SOUTH AFRICAN MEDIA PREDICTED A THIRD TEST WIN FOR THE SPRINGBOKS