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All Blacks not ruling out surprise tactics from 'old foe'

2018 Investec Rugby Championship, All Blacks v South Africa, 15-September-2018

The current iteration of the Springboks have built their reputation on kicking-oriented, forwards-dominated rugby – but the All Blacks aren’t putting all their eggs in one basket when it comes to preparing to play against the world champions this weekend.

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The All Blacks and Springboks will square off in back-to-back Test matches in South Africa over the coming weeks and while Ian Foster’s men have some idea what their opposition will bring to the table, they certainly aren’t ruling out a surprise attack.

Last year, every expectation was that the Springboks would simply try out-muscle the All Blacks up front in their rematch match on the Gold Coast during the Rugby Championship after attempting to do just that in their first clash of the competition.

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While they may not have entirely shied away from that tactic, the Springboks came out of the blocks firing with some brilliant interlinking play to set up an early try for Damian de Allende.

Throughout the match, the Springboks weren’t afraid to throw caution to the wind and they eventually triumphed 31-29 after suffering a 17-19 defeat in the more kicking-oriented first match-up. The All Blacks will be wary that South Africa have plenty of firepower to call upon should they decide to spring a surprise again in 2022.

“They’ll definitely play to their strengths, as they always do,” said experienced All Blacks second-rower Sam Whitelock this week. “In saying that, you never want to go in there and think that you have their game plan in your head.

“They’re smart guys, got a number of players that play around the world, so they’ve got a number of different styles they can go to and that’s something for us [to keep an eye on], to make sure we can stop their Plan A and from that, if they change it, then we’ve got to be able to stop [their Plan B] as well.

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“That’s the beauty of rugby. You can go out there and sometimes you know how they’re going to play and just stopping it’s the major [challenge]. That’s the cool thing, that’s the cool challenge about playing against South Africa – the old foe, as such.”

While the Springboks eventually secured a 2-1 series victory over Wales in July, the All Blacks had no such luck, dropping their final two matches against Ireland to suffer a historic series defeat.

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Whitelock says that the pressure the All Blacks are facing now is similar to when he first earned a call-up in 2010.

“When I first came into the team we were going into a World Cup at home, hadn’t won it for 24 years and there was a lot of external pressure. The best advice I got given from the senior players was ‘Don’t read into media, don’t worry about those things, just control what you can control,’ and that’s the main thing I’ve been trying to tell the boys and think about myself.

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“Controlling how you’re training, how you’re playing, how you’re preparing, that’s the best thing I got given as advice and it’s still true now I’m one of the older boys.

“I think from looking back to look forward, the times we’ve been here before, especially nailing the week and you’ve just got to deal with what’s in front of you.

Today, we just had to deal with clarity, get that understanding, and then as the week goes that will change slightly. But you’ve got to nail the days that lead into kick-off on Saturday. We’ve got to nail them and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Saturday’s match between the All Blacks and Springboks will kick off at 5:05pm SAST (3:05am NZT) from Mbombela Stadium.

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4 Comments
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ColinK 825 days ago

I would like the ABs to start Newell and De Groot in the front row but Foster won't. We should also put Savea back to 7 Foster won't do that either. We should play a bigger number 8, but.....we should consider specialists in all positions but..... In reality and sadly for Fozzy we should change our coach but....

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Andrew 825 days ago

There wont need to be any surprise tactics. They could even tell NZ what they planned to do. 3 long yrs and we still havent worked out a counter to decent bombs mauls and rush defence.

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Jmann 825 days ago

lol - The Bok only has the single dimension

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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