All Blacks greats: The three teams that have real depth and why Rassie Erasmus must be happy as Springboks ‘flex their muscles’
Springboks Jesse Kriel and Handre Pollard with an inset of France's Matthieu Jalibert.
Jeff Wilson believes that France, New Zealand and South Africa’s depth is unmatched in the international game.
The All Blacks legend insinuated as much when reviewing the action in round two of the Nations Championship with the three teams picking up victories over Australia, Italy and Scotland, respectively.
Les Bleus did so after head coach Fabian Galthie made a plethora of changes to his team, welcoming back many of the Top 14 finalists from Montpellier and Toulouse, whilst Springboks boss Rassie Erasmus retained just five starters from the side that beat England to face Scotland.
Dave Rennie also rotated his team, and whilst Wilson and former All Blacks scrum-half Justin Marshall weren’t overly pleased by the overall performance of the side, they still managed a 47-14 victory over the Azzurri.
Different levels of depth
Commenting on France’s 42-26 win over the Wallabies at Suncorp Stadium, Wilson said that the result put the performance against New Zealand in Christchurch into a new light and showed just how impressive they were.
The team that faced Australia was, on paper, a stronger one with Galthie gambling on a new playmaking axis with Romain Ntamack at fly-half while Matthieu Jalibert shifted to full-back. Aussie-born lock Emmanuel Meafou also lined up in the second-row with Peato Mauvaka returning at hooker.
“If you look at the performance of France, it actually then makes their performance last week in Christchurch even more impressive because for 20 minutes they were unstoppable,” the ex-winger remarked on the Sky Sports NZ’s Breakdown show.
“We’ve faced that before but this is what they can do, and we’re seeing different players.”
All Blacks legend predicts Dave Rennie selection is ‘specific tactic’ for the Springboks
This led Wilson to his claim about the depth the three aforementioned nations have at their disposal, which he believes is something that Australia lack.
“We quite often talk about depth in world rugby. There’s the Springboks’ depth, France have got depth, and where the other team has got depth. The one thing that they don’t have in Australia is depth,” he said.
“They’re struggling with the fact that they play really good rugby for 40 minutes. 21-12 they were up, and then they conceded 40 points. I’m not sure right now whether Australian rugby’s in good health depth-wise, or they can’t find the players who can lead and influence this group to win a big game. They didn’t win a game on the end-of-year tour last year.”
Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for world-class coverage you can trust.
Marshall on the Springboks
Marshall agreed with his fellow former All Black as he turned his attention to the Springboks, who defeated Scotland 42-28 despite an incredibly inexperienced team taking to the Loftus Versfeld pitch.
“The changes that the French made to bring in Ntamack and put Jalibert, who was fantastic in Christchurch, at full-back- that shows the depth of their squad,” the former half-back replied.
“You want to speak about depth. South Africa are exactly the same and their performance against Scotland was very, very impressive considering they basically changed their entire team from the week before and they were still able to put over 40 points on a very, very tenacious Scotland side.
“And what Rassie Erasmus must be happy about is the fact that at half-time it was 14-all. So they weren’t getting it all their own way. It wasn’t all one-way traffic. They had to work out in the second half how to break open the Scotland defence. And they did it in ways like this.
“This is fantastic from Jesse Kriel [his try] as you [Wilson] mentioned; Willemse was outstanding, and again, they just said, you know what, we’re going to flex our muscles and show you how much firepower we’ve actually got. Bomb Squad, we’ve got that, but we’ve also got a second XV that can beat a very, very good Scottish side that turned up on the day by 40-odd points.”