The Boks have a new-look team, but does that mean they will adopt a new game-plan as well?
The Springboks are back at it on Saturday (9am) when they take on the All Blacks in a fourth round Rugby Championship match in Wellington. They’ll be looking to bounce back after going down 24-17 to the same opponents in Auckland last Saturday.
It will be the 110th meeting between the teams and the 48th played on New Zealand soil. The Boks have won just 10 of those games in New Zealand.
Here then are four things to look out for on Saturday.
New players
Coach Rassie Erasmus has taken something of a gamble this week, leaving out several experienced men including Jesse Kriel, Damian de Allende, Handre Pollard and Eben Etzebeth from his matchday-23.
And in come the likes of Aphelele Fassi, Ethan Hooker, Damian Willemse, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and on the bench Marnus van der Merwe and Jan-Hendrik Wessels, many of them still rookies at Test level.
There are also new combinations, with Canan Moodie now at centre, alongside Willemse, Cobus Reinach at 9 and at lock there are two No 5s playing next to each other in Lood de Jager and Ruan Nortje. Eighthman Jasper Wiese also returns after serving a four-game ban.
The big question is that while the Bok team picked to play on Saturday is an exciting one, is it settled enough, and is there enough experience in key areas, for it to be successful?
Bok game-plan
There are always plenty of questions asked about a team’s game-plan following a defeat and this has been the case again since the Eden Park match, and then more so since Erasmus named his new-look team on Monday.
Taking into account the players picked, it looks as if the Boks will play a more attack-minded style of rugby, by keeping the ball in hand and taking it through the phases – what has become known as Tony-ball, referring to assistant coach Tony Brown. We’ll have to wait and see.
But there is no question Cobus Reinach loves to have a run, as do Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Damian Willemse, Canan Moodie, Ethan Hooker, Cheslin Kolbe, and Aphelele Fassi. None of them would be considered boring or conservative rugby players.
Areas under the microscope
The two areas where the Boks seemed to struggle the most at Eden Park were the lineouts and the breakdowns.
The communication between Malcolm Marx and his jumpers was just not up to scratch and neither was the execution at lineout time, resulting in lost balls and messy possession at times. This will be a key area for improvement, as the Boks will want good clean lineout ball to maul with.
The Boks will also have to get stuck in at the breakdowns, to secure their ball quicker and more cleanly. Every player needs to step it up.
Also, the Boks will have to be better in their opponents’ 22m area. They didn’t finish off their entries into this red zone in Auckland and it cost them … and on Saturday they will have to be better when in the strike zone.
What to make of the All Blacks?
The reality is the New Zealanders got ahead early in Auckland with two soft tries due to individual Bok player errors … and over the 80 minutes as a whole were not that much better than the Boks. In fact, in the last 60 minutes the Boks outscored the All Blacks.
So now, having had a go at each other for 80 minutes, what will the All Blacks come up with this week?
Scott Robertson’s team are deadly in space and with time, but take those things away and what else do they have – are they better than the Boks in the set-pieces, at the rucks and mauls, in defence?
It will be interesting to see if they try anything new or different in Wellington.
