All Blacks coach Scott Robertson said they prepared for the Springboks' kicking game but it still proved the difference between the sides.
Gutted All Blacks coach Scott Robertson, and captain Scott Barrett, said the team would be feeling the hurt of their historic 43–10 Wellington defeat to the Springboks for some time to come.
Still, they said they had to somehow refocus during their by-week on their upcoming Tests against the Wallabies if they wished to defend the Bledisloe Cup and win the Rugby Championship.
South Africa extended their unbeaten run at Sky Stadium to three matches on Saturday, while simultaneously defending the Freedom Cup for the first time ever, and inflicting New Zealand’s heaviest defeat in rugby.
‘… and then that happens’
“You get extremely disappointed because you put so much work ethic into the team. Culturally, you set yourselves up around digging in and showing grit… and then that happens,” Robertson said of how the All Blacks surrendered a 10–7 lead at the break to allow the Boks to score five unanswered tries.
“We couldn’t get anything happening, they just weren’t on our tier. Congratulations to them.”
The All Blacks coach said things would have been very different if Cheslin Kolbe’s gamble on an intercept had not paid off, and he didn’t score the Springboks’ first try.
“I felt when we came in at half-time we had done enough… Then in the second half, they won the aerial battle, they won the scraps, too many penalties around the set-piece. We lost a couple of really big moments there and the game got away.”
He said South Africa had often been criticised for kicking too much in rugby, but they got return on it.
“We’ve done a lot of prep on it [kicking] but they just owned that area and end up putting so much pressure onto us. Well done to them, they know their DNA.”
All Blacks must bounce back against the Wallabies
Barrett said the All Blacks needed to use the “discomfort” they felt about the record defeat to bounce back against Australia.
“As a group you have to stick together,” the captain said. “In the end we look at what will give us the biggest shift. Right now, it is probably set-piece stuff. It’s an area we thought we made a shift. But it’s where they got energy from and grew in confidence.”
Robertson added they will not be “chasing too many things” in training before their first game against Australia in a fortnight.
“The aerial battle just changed everything. And skillset. We’ll own what we need to get better at and keep playing.”
