Ex-All Black draws comparison between Springboks and the great 2015 New Zealand side
The current Springboks, 2015's All Blacks and ex-New Zealand hooker James Parsons.
Former All Blacks and Blues hooker James Parsons says that he sees strong similarities between the Springboks team and the all-conquering New Zealand team that dominated the game a decade ago.
Just like the Springboks team, who won back-to-back Rugby World Cup titles in 2019 and 2023, the All Blacks also lifted the Webb-Ellis Cup during successive campaigns in 2011 and 2015.
Those were the days when Graham Henry and Steve Hansen were the All Blacks coaches and Parsons says the current Boks team reminds him of Hansen’s side, who were particularly difficult to beat.
New Zealand suffered an 18-12 loss to South Africa in Cape Town on Saturday which was their second Rugby Championship defeat in a row to the Springboks and the fourth successive time – in all competitions – that they come off second best against their arch-rivals.
Lost after leading at half-time
What made the All Blacks’ latest defeat extra disappointing for their fans is that, just like the Johannesburg Test, they threw away a half-time lead before succumbing to the Boks.
In the first Test at Ellis Park, New Zealand held a slender 12-11 lead at the interval – and were also up 27-17 midway through the second half – while they led 9-3 in Cape Town and eventually lost both Tests by narrow margins.
Parsons emphasised that the Springboks deserve plenty of credit for securing another triumph over their old foes in Cape Town and said there were some key factors which helped them gain success.
“The fact that they’ve got a lot of experience across their squad,” he said on the Aotearoa Rugby Pod. “They don’t have any real inexperience across their squad barring one or two players.
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“But in particular, in the back end of the 20 minutes (in the second half) and if you look when we were just as successful as they were between 2015 and ’16, there was a genuine focus on 23 (players) and, when you had that role on the bench, you knew you were going to be on a bench.
“You couldn’t really force your way into the starting team because that’s how your style of play worked. And there was almost like a bench captain as such.
“It was another sort of, I suppose, team in itself. And it’s a very important part. They (the Boks) obviously knew and had confidence that they could still come back from where they were.”
Although the All Blacks lost to the Boks again, Parsons said it was not all doom and gloom for them and identified some positives for the men in black.
“We tactically changed and we made some improvement that was great to see,” he said.
‘Won the turnover battle’
“I think most importantly in and around the breakdown, like our tackle selection and our ability to get turnovers. We won the turnover battle against the Springboks which I don’t think we’ve done for a very long time.
“So that was a great shift from the week prior where we got turned over a hell of a lot ourselves. We almost did what they did to us a lot of the time.”
