How the Springboks beat the All Blacks despite not being the better attacking side and the six stats that decided Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry
Springboks celebrate Rugby's Greatest Rivalry win over All Blacks.
New Zealand scored more tries than South Africa, made more line breaks, missed fewer tackles and were more clinical in the 22 across four Tests of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry, and lost the series 3-1.
Run the same numbers over the Six Nations and the Nations Championship and the pattern repeats, which tells you the statistics we argue about on a Sunday morning aren’t the ones that decide Test matches. Kick metres, rucks, turnovers, penalties, carry metres and 22 entries: here are the six that do, and the evidence from a year of rugby that they work.
The three minutes in Baltimore that gave the game away
48 minutes into the fourth Test, with the Springboks 17-14 up and the All Blacks having spent the whole second quarter camped in South African territory without a point to show for it, Karl Dickson’s arm went up for a scrum penalty. The Boks kicked to the corner, the drive split the New Zealand pack and Malcolm Marx went over; three minutes later, from a scrum off the restart, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu ran into the 22, the big men blasted forward and Pieter-Steph du Toit scored. Two tries, 12 points, and between them the ball barely touched the ground.
That’s the series in a paragraph. New Zealand had the better numbers in every column that gets read out on television, and South Africa had the better numbers in six columns that nobody reads out, and South Africa won three Tests out of four. The bench played its part, but underneath it was a way of playing that a small set of statistics describes and the popular set misses.
The six numbers
We’ve spent the summer testing a simple proposition, match by match, across the three competitions that mattered this year: that Test rugby, stripped of the noise, is decided by six measures and six only.
– Most kick metres
– Fewest rucks
– Fewest turnovers conceded
– Fewest penalties conceded
– Most carry metres
– Most entries into the opposition 22
Six numbers, and the side that wins more of them wins the Test; across Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry, the Six Nations and the Nations Championship we haven’t found a match where that wasn’t so.
The six are one way of playing, seen from six angles. Kick long and to contest and you’re in their half. Concede fewer penalties and you stay there, because a penalty is the one way a defending side gets out of its own 22 without earning it. Keep your own ball and you keep the pressure on. Go forward on every carry and you get to the 22 in fewer phases. Arrive there often enough and the scoreboard takes care of itself, whatever your conversion rate.
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The hinge is the ruck count. Received wisdom treats rucks as a sign of control, phases won and pressure built, whereas every ruck is a contest you can lose, a penalty you can concede, and a second in which the defence gets to reset and fill the hole you’ve just made, so the side that gets from its own half to the try line in the fewest rucks is playing faster and safer at the same time. Fewest rucks is a tempo measure and a risk measure in one, and because it drags the turnover count and the penalty count along with it, it’s the number that moves the other five.
How the Springboks beat the better attacking side
The series numbers, South Africa first:
– Kicks in play: 94 to 78, and the All Blacks secured only 30% of the contestable kicks sent their way
– Penalties conceded: 35 to 43, with 14 Springbok scrum penalties plus a penalty try, roughly a third of everything New Zealand gave away
– Lineouts lost on own throw: 2 to 8
– Post-contact metres: 1,387 to 1,388, a dead heat in the collisions
– Time in the lead: 210 minutes to 77
– The columns New Zealand won: tries 17 to 14, line breaks 35 to 28, points per 22 entry 3.5 to 2.6, missed tackles 99 to 129
Put the two lists side by side and the argument makes itself. South Africa kicked more and kicked to contest, so they had the territory, and they gave away eight fewer penalties, so they kept it. They lost two lineouts on their own throw in four Tests whilst New Zealand lost eight, and a lost lineout is worse than a lost ruck, because it’s the platform the All Blacks’ whole first-phase attack is built on; that’s the turnover column running the Springboks’ way from Cape Town onwards. The collisions were level to the metre, which means South Africa’s carry metres came from going forward on every carry rather than occasionally going a long way, and that’s what put them in the 22 more often. A side that arrives twelve times and scores at 2.6 a visit outscores a side that arrives eight times and scores at 3.5, which is why the entry count matters more than the conversion rate.
The moments carry the same story. Ethan Hooker, a winger, winning a breakdown turnover at FNB Stadium with the All Blacks fizzing at 7-5, because turnovers are everybody’s job in this Springbok side; Marx rolling over from scrum penalty, corner and maul at Soweto and again in Baltimore, because that’s what a penalty in the opposition half is worth in green; and Andre Esterhuizen coming on early in the second half of the fourth Test and tipping the balance three metres at a time, which is what carry metres look like when the line breaks aren’t coming.
Penalties are bodies: why the fourth number is really about 14 men
The penalty count deserves its own paragraph, because it’s the one metric that changes the number of players on the pitch. South Africa collected four cards across the Greatest Rivalry to New Zealand’s one, made 585 tackles and still won 3-1, which looks like a hole in the argument until you see where the cards fell and what happened around them. The two yellows inside a minute at Ellis Park, Marco van Staden and Cobus Reinach, came with the Boks already ten points down in the last 10 minutes, and that’s the model working in reverse: a side losing the penalty count while chasing a game gets buried, because a penalty is field position and a card is field position plus a missing tackler for 10 minutes. Lood de Jager’s yellow in the 79th minute at Cape Town and Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s inside 10 minutes at FNB Stadium, by contrast, came either side of long spells in which South Africa controlled the count, and a side that’s winning the penalty battle can survive a card, because the opposition can’t get out of its own half to use the extra man.
The Six Nations makes the same point at scale. 26 cards is a record, England’s nine equalled the worst in Championship history and cost them a record 146 points against, and the 30 successful penalty goals were the fewest since 1980, which means the discipline crisis showed up as cards and territory rather than as three-pointers. The fourth number bites through bodies on the pitch as much as through points off the tee.
Ellis Park: the one defeat, and the best evidence of all
South Africa lost the first Test 33-16, and on the surface it was the model failing, because the Boks had 10 entries into the All Black 22 to New Zealand’s nine, 60% of first-half possession and the bulk of the territory. Look at how the 10 entries were built, though: long, multi-phase drives, ruck after ruck, each one an invitation for a hand on the ball at the tackle, and Rassie Erasmus admitted afterwards that New Zealand stripping the ball in contact was the one thing he hadn’t prepared for. The All Blacks won 14 turnovers to five, Fabian Holland charged down Grant Williams’s clearance for the try that turned the game, and two Springbok yellows inside a minute in the last 10 turned a 10-point deficit into a rout. South Africa scored 0.7 points a visit; New Zealand scored 3.6.
So the entries were there and the five numbers behind them weren’t, and that’s the point. Kick short, build rucks, hand the ball over and lose the penalty count, and however often you reach the 22 you’ll arrive tired and you’ll arrive without the ball. Three weeks later in Baltimore, with the whole system working, two entries in three minutes produced 12 points.
France won the Six Nations on the column nobody mentioned
The Championship stats:
France: kick metres 4,034, top; metres per carry 3.9, top; 65.3% of 32 contestable kicks retained, 12 of them leading directly to tries (no other side managed more than three); 30 tries; 33 points or more in every match
Scotland: 761 carries, most in the tournament; 20 tries, their best campaign; third
Wales: 29.4 metres per kick, top; 10.2% of kicks retained, bottom; one win
England: 9 cards, equalling Italy’s 2002 record; 146 points conceded, a record; best lineout at 94.9%; Joe Heyes won 15 scrum penalties
Ireland: 14 tries conceded, best defence; 42 turnovers won, joint top; second
Italy: 42 turnovers won, joint top; 161 missed tackles, worst; sixth
The whole thing: 26 cards, a record; 30 successful penalty goals, fewest since 1980
Every conversation about France was about the attack, and with Louis Bielle-Biarrey scoring nine that’s fair enough, but the champions also led the tournament for kick metres and for contestable retention, and twelve regathered kicks that became tries is the first metric and the sixth working together: kick long, kick to compete, regather in their half, and you’re in the 22 before the defence has turned round. Scotland carried more than anyone and finished third, because 761 carries is 761 chances to build a ruck and France got where they were going in fewer. Wales are the whole model in reverse, the ball going a long way and coming straight back, and a kick that comes back is a turnover conceded from forty metres further away. England had the best lineout in the tournament, the best scrummager in it and a record card count, and the fourth metric buried the other five. Ireland had the best defence and 42 turnovers and finished second; Italy had the same 42 turnovers and 161 missed tackles and finished bottom, which tells you a turnover column on its own is worth very little.
France’s one defeat, 50-40 in Edinburgh, was a 90-point match in a Championship that produced 26 cards and only 30 penalty goals, and our reading is that they lost it on discipline rather than attack, which is what the model would predict.
Loftus: 46 missed tackles and a 14-point win
The Nations Championship’s southern leg:
– South Africa: 3 from 3,130 points for, 49 against
– New Zealand: 3 from 3,121 for, 70 against
– Loftus, 11 July: South Africa 42 Scotland 28; the Boks missed 46 tackles and won it off scrum penalties
– Eden Park, 18 July: New Zealand 40 Ireland 21
– Durban, 18 July: South Africa 43 Wales 0
Loftus is the best case study. 46 missed tackles is a losing performance on any conventional reading, and Sione Tuipulotu said afterwards that Scotland had had plenty of possession in the Springbok 22 without capitalising, and both were true and neither mattered, because South Africa’s entries came off scrum penalties and Embrose Papier’s break from a ruck outside the 22, whilst Scotland’s came at the end of long possessions that finished with a double movement and a crooked throw. Rucks built and turnovers conceded are in the six, missed tackles aren’t, and Scotland lost the two that count.
Eden Park did the same to Ireland, beaten at their own religion, out-kicked and out-territoried by a side that concedes fewer rucks, and the possession game ran out of pitch. Durban is the scoreline as the argument, seven tries from a side that kicked long, didn’t concede and kept arriving.
What the six leave out, and why that’s the point
South Africa missed 129 tackles across the Greatest Rivalry and won 3-1, so tackle completion stays out. The All Blacks had 56% of the possession at Ellis Park with 39% of the territory and lost the series, so possession stays out, because more ball in your own half is how you lose. Line breaks, tries per entry and defenders beaten, the whole highlights package, stay out with them. What the six describe instead is how the ball moves up the pitch, how safely it moves and how often it arrives, and it’s no coincidence that the side with two World Cups and the inaugural Greatest Rivalry trophy plays exactly that way, or that the side that just won the Six Nations quietly topped the same columns.
Paris in November is where this gets settled
France topped the Six Nations for kick metres, contestable retention and metres per carry, which is three of the six, and won the title on the last kick of the last day; South Africa have won two World Cups and the first Greatest Rivalry on the same three numbers and have bolted the discipline and the turnover count on top. On the weekend of 13 to 15 November they meet at the Stade de France in the northern leg of the Nations Championship, the only fixture this year that puts the two sides who own the first column on the same pitch, and the last time they met there, the 2023 World Cup quarter-final, South Africa won 29-28 by a Cheslin Kolbe charge-down of a conversion, in a match France controlled for long stretches with ball in hand and still lost. That night had all six numbers in it before anyone thought to count them. Whichever side wins the other five in Paris goes into the last round a week later, South Africa in Dublin on 21 November, with the inaugural Nations Championship final at Twickenham on the weekend of 28 and 29 November within reach.
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