Springboks are ‘bossing’ the scrum as ex-hooker claims All Blacks coaching ‘is not good enough
Scrum between the South Africa and New Zealand with an inset of New Zealand head coach Dave Rennie.
The All Blacks failed to heed the warning signs from earlier in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour and paid the price in the third Test match against the Springboks.
That is the view of ex-hooker Hanyani Shimange, who believes that New Zealand have a coaching issue when it comes to defending mauls and an even bigger problem with their scrum.
The Springboks benefitted hugely from their set-piece work during the clash at FNB Stadium in Soweto over the weekend, with Malcolm Marx scoring a try off a powerful maul, while Rassie Erasmus’ men were awarded a penalty try from the scrum and won four penalties.
Dave Rennie and his senior assistant coach Neil Barnes have claimed that the Springboks haven’t been scrummaging legally but admit that they have to adapt as World Rugby doesn’t agree with their complaints.
All Blacks’ scrum issue
Shimange says that those complaints have been echoed in the New Zealand media during the tour, but he rubbished those claims, adding that the issues around the scrum are a personnel problem and pinned the maul defence shortcomings on the coaches and tactics.
“How do they change the props? How do you fix that scrum? You can’t, and it’s going to be an ongoing problem. Hence the media issues around it,” the ex-hooker affectionately known as Shimmy said on the Verdict show.
“I was listening to one or two podcasts that were saying we were illegal sometimes, a set piece – please tell me where, because the one time we double-banked, it was penalised.
“The rest of the time, sometimes you’ve just got to give credit and say: ‘Look, we’ve just got a fantastic generation of props’. Before Wilco Louw, it was Frans Malherbe, and we saw what he did at scrum time. Beast [Mtawarira] was there also.
“So it’s just something we’re bossing at the moment, very well at scrum time, and we know how to use it well.”
Legendary Springboks flanker Schalk Burger argued that the All Blacks only have a set-piece issue when facing South Africa, as Rennie’s men dominated those facets of play during the Nations Championship.
“Shimmy, it’s only an issue against South Africa,” he said.
“You look at their other Tests in the Nations Championship; that pack of forwards was dominant. So, as you mentioned in your opening statement, I think the gap between set-piece was #1 in the world and then #2 in the world; that’s where there’s a big divide there.”
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Warning signs were there
Shimmy added that the South African United Rugby Championship teams exposed these flaws in the All Blacks’ game and the coaching ticket failed to address those concerns.
“The warning signs were there in the first game of the tour against the Stormers,” he said.
“The All Blacks got mauled, and they got scrummed against the Lions; a push-over scrum also. I just thought that, with previous games against New Zealand, the way they try to stop mauls just doesn’t work.
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“New Zealand tried to maul us and the Springboks give them front ball [at the lineout], and then marched them backwards, and Asafo Aumua was forced to break and play.
“It’s a coaching error with New Zealand, the fact that they’re not exposed to it by playing against South African teams. They’re going to get mauled every single time. The maul-stopping strategy or the coaching is not good enough.”
