Nick Mallett’s verdict on Springboks and All Blacks’ contrasting styles and its impact on them in Greatest Rivalry series
Springboks wing Kurt-Lee Arendse takes on the All Blacks defence and ex-South Africa coach Nick Mallett (inset).
Nick Mallett feels the contrasting styles between the Springboks and All Blacks during the Greatest Rivalry series has worked in the world champions’ favour and hampered their opponents.
Ahead of the fourth and final Test at the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Saturday, South Africa are brimming with confidence as they currently hold a 2-1 lead in the series.
This comes after the All Blacks clinched a deserved triumph in the opening Test in Johannesburg before the Springboks bounced back with successive victories in Cape Town and Soweto, respectively.
Much has been said about the different styles on display from the arch-rivals, with the Springboks favouring their power game where they opt to play mostly with their forwards, which sees them mostly grinding out results.
Meanwhile, the All Blacks prefer a fast-paced approach in which they give the ball plenty of air and their backs usually score plenty of tries.
All Blacks rewarded with plenty of tries
That approach has been rewarding for the men in black as they have already scored 13 tries in the previous three Tests, compared to the Boks’ eight, but Dave Rennie’s troops have come off second best in the forward exchanges, where they have conceded numerous penalties, and that has paved the way to victory for Rassie Erasmus’ charges in the last two Tests.
Mallett believes another Springbok victory in Baltimore this weekend will prove to their head coach that several of his older players will still be able to be competitive at next year’s Rugby World Cup in Australia.
“If we do manage to win these three in a row, it’s going to give everyone a lot of confidence going into that final phase in the World Cup, where you’ve got to string three good ones together (in the knockout rounds),” he told the Talking Boks podcast.
“Just remember, last time (at the 2023 World Cup in France), one point, one point, one point (in the play-off games).
“There’s a lot of luck involved there and it’s not only well done, but cheap as when you’re 15-6 down against England and in that semi-final, and you knock the ball on five yards from your line, and they’ve got a scrum on the left-hand side of the field.
“I mean, any single team in the world should score points from that and we win a penalty because Ox Nche (then) does something quite extraordinary. I mean, we weren’t able to double up, our performance against France (in the quarter-finals) was heroic, and the performance against England in the first half was tepid.
“It was really poor. So had Rassie not completely changed and put the Bomb Squad on, we wouldn’t have got through that. So, that hasn’t been the case in these two games (against the All Blacks).”
Mallett then revealed how New Zealand’s game plan has not really put the Boks’ players under pressure.
‘The All Blacks haven’t been challenging us physically’
“I will say again, because I don’t think they’ve been getting too tired, because the All Blacks haven’t been challenging us physically,” he explained.
“The All Blacks have been challenging us with movement, which we’ve had to get better at. But they’ve been trying to get the ball away from the set-piece, from the lineout and scrum as quickly as possible.
“So they’re not taking our legs away with their efforts, and we are taking their legs away with ours. When we have the ball, we put them under pressure, we make them defend, we make them scrum, we force them to make big hits. And yet they’re not forcing that on us.
“So, perhaps in that sense, our older players have got through these three games better because we aren’t facing a France or we’re not facing a physical England, who play differently.”