By Estea Rademeyer, Sports Journalist.
Photo Credit: All- Blacks Website.
Reporting from Cape Town- Cape Town has a way of making the All Blacks feel at home.
Ardie Savea felt it again this week, walking through a waterfront mall and later training in the shadow of Table Mountain, surrounded by people wearing black jerseys who have no particular reason, on paper, to love a New Zealand team.
Old habits linger here.
Support for the All Blacks in the Western Cape stretches back to a time when some locals felt they had more in common with a multi-cultural side from across the ocean than with their own national team. Times changed. The affection did not.
Savea met a family who had driven from Namibia. The boy’s name was Ardie. “That’s what it’s about,” the captain said. “Footy is 80 minutes, but you live life after that.”
He also knows what is coming at a sold-out DHL Stadium. “We understand the wounded beast. We understand when you lose everything gets a lot more amplified. But that’s the same for us. We don’t want to look back after the 80-minute whistle and sit there with our heads down.”
The Springboks are that wounded beast. Last Saturday at Ellis Park they were beaten 33-16, five tries to two, in a performance that left their own supporters staring at the scoreboard in something close to disbelief.
Rassie Erasmus did not hide. “It’s awful. It’s shit. It’s not nice to be in this position. My heart is broken for what we did on Saturday,” he said this week. “We are angry with each other. We as coaches did and said stupid things. And the players did stupid things on the pitch.”
The first Test exposed both sides in useful ways. For an hour the Springbok pack looked like the world champions they are, a mean, heavy unit that wanted to bury the All Blacks in the scrum. Pieter-Steph du Toit kept calling for set-pieces after penalties, the kind of choice that delights purists when it works. It did not work often enough.
The All Blacks survived the examination. A fresh front row of George Bower, Asafo Aumua and Fletcher Newell won a penalty that changed the mood of the game. Suddenly the visitors were in Springbok territory, using an improved scrum, street smarts and the simple habit of keeping the ball alive near the touchlines. Luke Jacobson and Will Jordan scored. Ruben Love converted both. First blood to New Zealand.
The numbers told a story the Boks will not want to repeat. They entered the All Blacks’ 22 ten or eleven times and came away with almost nothing , around 0.7 to 0.9 points per visit.
The All Blacks were more clinical. Jasper Wiese carried like a man possessed, 18 times, dragging defenders with him. Du Toit was next. For the All Blacks, Fabian Holland and Savea each made eight carries; Holland even scored after charging down Grant Williams. The Boks turned the ball over 23 times. Too many of those were sloppy rather than forced.
Dave Rennie’s side had prepared a plan: strip the ball in the tackle, play with width, refuse to die in the set-piece. It worked. Erasmus and his staff had spent the previous week talking about All Blacks tactics at the breakdown and lineout maul, even bringing former referee Jaco Peyper into a press conference.
This week the tone changed. The focus turned inward.
Erasmus still insists the series will be decided in the third Test, as it so often is with this team. History is on his side. The Boks lost the first Test to the Lions in 2021 and won the series. They dropped pool games at the last two World Cups and still lifted the trophy. They have not lost back-to-back home Tests against the same opponent since 1997. That record is now on the line.
Sir John Kirwan expects the Boks to look different. “I think they will be way better. They will be more conservative,” he said. “I think their infield kicking game will be different. I expect them to pin us into our own half.” He also thinks this All-Blacks group will improve. “These guys are on a journey to get better every week, so I think it’s going to be a massive game. The pressure is on the world champions, and I am sure they will step up to that.”
The Boks have already shuffled the deck. Cheslin Kolbe passed a late fitness test and comes in on the wing. Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu starts at flyhalf after Handré Pollard withdrew with a niggle. That is a shift in personality as much as personnel.
Pollard’s more traditional kicking game replaced by a less predictable young playmaker. Savea shrugged when asked about it. “It doesn’t matter. I know their mindset is whoever steps in and fills that Springboks jersey, they’re world-class. We prepare the same. We know they’re hungry – but we’re hungry as well.”
New Zealand have their own adjustments. Bower starts after his impact off the bench last week. Tupou Vaa’i moves to lock. Leroy Carter has earned a start on the wing. The All Blacks will want a better beginning; Savea was clear they cannot afford to start slowly again against a side that will come out physical and dominant. Accuracy and discipline will decide whether they can camp the Boks in the wrong parts of the field or whether they gift the world champions the territory they failed to use last weekend.
The Springboks are in the corner they so often inhabit and so often escape. The All Blacks have a chance to do something they have not managed in this country for nearly thirty years: win two in a row on the road against the world champions. Both sides know the script. Both insist they are ready for the next page. 80 minutes, between the white lines, will tell us which of them actually is.