Springboks v All Blacks prediction: Dave Rennie’s men to ‘buck the trend’ and take Greatest Rivalry opener at Ellis Park
Grant Williams and Cam Roigard do battle at the base in the Springboks v All Blacks clash.
A fortnight of tour matches, six weeks of mind games and rather more lawyerly press conferences, come to an end at 17:10 on Saturday. Both coaches have then gone and picked sides nobody really anticipated, and between them they’ve left out around 230 caps and four Rugby World Cup finals, in the shape Handre Pollard and Beauden Barrett, out of the 23 altogether. The Greatest Rivalry begins.
New Zealand have been in South Africa for a fortnight and played three franchise sides in it, and the total amount of real Test match analysis evidence collected would fit comfortably on a beermat.
Rassie Erasmus split his squad, sent half of them to Buenos Aires to grind out a 17-10 win, then cheerfully explained afterwards that he’d expected them to look disjointed because he’d built the thing that way. Eben Etzebeth and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu are the only two of those starters who’ve kept their jerseys, with seven more dropping to the bench, and the rest of the side spent the week at home with their feet up and their phones off. New Zealand, meanwhile, put 142 points on three URC franchises and conceded 40, which was a lovely watch and about as predictive as a pre-season kickabout in a monsoon.
So we’re down to two matches that have some bearing on form; South Africa beat England 45-21 on this pitch in the Nations Championship, New Zealand finished their own campaign by putting 40-21 on Ireland at Eden Park, and everything since has been press conferences and mind games, of which there’s been no shortage whatsoever, much to the delight of editorial desks game-wide.
Somewhere in all that shouting, most have failed to mention that this is the first time these two have met under the full law set that arrived on 1 July, brake foot and 20-minute red card and all. Two camps who’ve spent the week telling a referee what to look out for at the breakdown, and neither of them has said a word about the actual new laws, which may turn out to be a real talking point post-match.
Where the game will be won
The man who invented the Bomb Squad has named a 5-3 bench, which is a bit like Ferrari rocking up at Monza and unloading bicycles with rod brakes.
Jan-Hendrik Wessels, Gerhard Steenekamp, Zachary Porthen, Cobus Wiese and Marco van Staden, then Andre Esterhuizen, Cobus Reinach and Manie Libbok, which is to say no 6-2 and heaven knows no 7-1. For eight years, surviving to the hour against South Africa has earned a side nothing more than the privilege of meeting an entirely fresh front-row with 20 minutes left, and Erasmus has simply chosen not to bring them; whether that’s confidence in his starters, an eye on the bodies he’ll need in Cape Town and Soweto, or a view that this particular All Blacks side has to be beaten with the ball rather than sat on, he isn’t about to tell us.
The fly-half call is the other half of the same thought, since it’s Feinberg-Mngomezulu for an hour of invention and Manie Libbok for 20 minutes of the same, with Pollard and his ice-cold closing not in the squad at all. Dave Rennie has done precisely the same thing from the other side, handing Ruben Love the 10 jersey with no specialist replacement behind him and 145 caps of Beauden Barrett watching it on television. Two coaches, the biggest afternoon either country has had in years, and both of them have backed the man who might win it over the man who probably wouldn’t lose it. It sits alongside the news that Tony Brown was kept at home last week whilst the second squad flew to Argentina, quietly working on something with the men who’d actually be playing this one.
Then there’s the ruck, where it’s all about speed of ball, and the Opta figures from July have South Africa as the slowest of the 12 Nations Championship sides at 4.23 seconds, with New Zealand third quickest at 2.95, which reads as a Springbok problem right up until you ask what each side actually wants out of the contact area. Against France, 81 per cent of New Zealand’s ruck ball arrived inside three seconds; against England here, only 47 per cent of South Africa’s did. The Boks aren’t asking the ruck to produce backline tempo; they’re asking it to get their carriers in behind, and once a man beats the line they’ll flood support to him rather than count seconds off a clock.
Which puts Cam Roigard somewhere near the centre of the afternoon, since New Zealand’s ruck speed drops to 2.90 with him on the park, quick enough to have led the tournament outright; every breakdown has a fourth man that nobody bothers counting, and he’s it.
The scrum, for once, looks like a genuine contest, with Ox Nché’s knee having held, 144 kilogrammes of Wilco Louw at three from the first minute rather than the 60th, and Ethan de Groot arriving off a Nations Championship in which he returned 100 per cent on his own feed against both France and Ireland. Jason Ryan has spent the week calling the Springbok pack the best in the world whilst telling his own front-row to arrive full of confidence, which is about the only position available to a man in his job.
What they said
The week began with Rennie suggesting referees might speed the game up and take a firmer line on time wasting, particularly at the lineout, and it escalated from there in a manner nobody who has followed Erasmus for nine years will find remotely surprising. He turned up to his first press conference of Test week with Jaco Peyper, the former international referee who now advises him, sitting alongside, and made it clear the Springboks play to the letter of the law. Bringing a retired official to a media session to answer a coaching complaint is a move of pure Rassie, and it worked, because everybody spent two days discussing it. The master of deflection deflects.
Underneath the theatre, he was generous about his opposite number, noting he’d coached against Rennie back in the Munster and Glasgow days and rating him highly, and he expects to be surprised. New Zealand won’t show at Ellis Park what they showed in the franchise matches, and the Boks kept attack coach Brown at home whilst the second squad went to Argentina, working on material specifically for this weekend. As Erasmus put it, “Neither team can tell the other how to use the ball.”
He also asked the Ellis Park crowd to stay quiet through the haka, pointing to Cape Town where it was heard properly, which is a small thing that tells you how much he wants this occasion to be what it ought to be.
Rennie, for his part, has been remarkably honest for a coach four days out, telling his players the intensity waiting for them is three, four, five-fold what the Bulls brought at Loftus and that the line speed will be higher than anything they’ve met under him. He’s also been open that a lot of good players are missing out, and that “in four Tests I think we’ll end up using 30-odd players anyway”, which is a coach managing a squad across a series rather than a single afternoon, and it’s worth remembering when the bench conversation starts.
Tana Umaga, who runs the defence, has been making the same point from the other end: don’t give South Africa entries into the areas they want, because those areas suit them, and win the possession count. Six matches into the job he’s conceding 23 points a game against international sides and thirteen against URC opposition, and he’s admitted a couple of things haven’t been going as well as they were during the Nations Championship. Refreshing candour, or an early warning, depending on which anthem you sing.
Steve Hansen’s contribution was to note that this All Blacks side looks happier under Rennie than it did under Scott Robertson, which is generous to one man and rather less so to the other.
Players to watch
Ruben Love gets the keys to Ellis Park, at altitude, in front of a full house. He’s got Roigard inside and Jordie Barrett outside, which is roughly the fly-half equivalent of being handed a scooter with stabilisers and two big brothers, and if he’s still breathing after 20 minutes, the All Blacks have a shape South Africa haven’t seen in recent times. Add the in-form Quinn Tupaea as a supporting cast in the 13 channel, and it’s safe to say the All Blacks have firepower.
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is the mirror image and the selection that’ll have Johannesburg talking through Friday, a 10 of real invention handed the jersey for the biggest afternoon of the cycle, and one of only two men Erasmus kept from the side that beat Argentina.
Damian McKenzie‘s ankle has come right, and he starts at 15 with Will Jordan and Josh Moorby either side of him, which is the best back three New Zealand could have picked for an afternoon likely spent underneath a ball; Jordan, who broke Doug Howlett’s national try-scoring record during the Nations Championship, is about as safe a pair of hands as the game currently has.
Paul de Villiers starts at openside off a season in which he won 19 turnovers for the Stormers, then topped the carry count against Wales with 16 whilst pinching three more, and with Siya Kolisi sitting this one out as a precaution, he gets his first crack at the All Blacks. Carrying and thieving in the same afternoon is a rare combination, and between him and Pieter-Steph du Toit they’ll decide how much tidy ball Roigard ever actually sees.
Damian de Allende wins his 100th cap alongside Jesse Kriel, the two of them reuniting as the most-capped centre partnership South Africa have ever put on a field, whilst at the other end Ardie Savea leads New Zealand out for an afternoon that would have been unimaginable in Wellington 11 months ago.
Main head-to-head
Let’s look at two nines who couldn’t be less alike, and the whole afternoon will shine a spotlight on both their game management and their game-changing skills.
Grant Williams is the quickest man in that Springbok squad and very probably the quickest nine anywhere, most dangerous once a defence is in scramble, and the tries he scores look like accidents until you’ve watched four or five and realised he’s spotted the tired man on the fringe about two seconds before anybody else in the ground.
Cam Roigard is a different animal entirely, built closer to a flanker than a scrum-half, and he’ll pick and go at a defence until it bends rather than looking for a gap that isn’t there yet; New Zealand’s ruck ball drops to 2.90 seconds whenever he’s on the park, which would have topped the Nations Championship outright, and his kicking game is exquisite.
Both want the game played at their own tempo, and neither will get it for 80 minutes. Roigard wants it fast and flat and again and again, whilst Williams is quite content to wait until the hour when legs have gone and fringes get lazy, which is also, awkwardly for New Zealand, roughly when Cobus Reinach turns up to do the identical job on fresh ones. The 5-3 cuts both ways, mind, since Roigard will be running at the same tiring Springbok forwards from sixty onwards rather than at a front row that has just come on.
Underneath that, we have the front-rows. Ox Nché against Tyrel Lomax is the one we’d set a wake up alarm for, Ox, a man who has ruined more Saturday evenings than a broken boiler, up against the tighthead Rennie keeps choosing ahead of Fletcher Newell, and Malcolm Marx and Codie Taylor working either end of the same lineout is two of the best hookers of the professional era doing things that won’t make the highlights. Ethan de Groot arrives as the outstanding forward of New Zealand’s Nations Championship and finds out on Saturday what that’s worth in Johannesburg.
Prediction
We had South Africa by nine before the teams landed, yet the 5-3 bench and New Zealand’s midfield firepower has changed our minds.
For eight years the Springbok plan has had a fourth quarter built into it, and a New Zealand side that survived to the hour still had 20 minutes of a brand-new front-row to get through. That’s all gone, because Erasmus has picked five forwards and three backs and effectively told his starting pack to go and win the thing themselves, which is either supreme confidence or a coach already thinking about Cape Town, and either way it hands New Zealand something they haven’t had at Ellis Park in a decade, namely a final quarter they can actually plan for.
Add Roigard at nine, McKenzie at 15, that back three under the high ball and a fly-half with nothing to lose, and the visitors have real jeopardy in them. Against all that, South Africa have won 12 in a row and 31 of their last 34; they’re at altitude in front of a full house, and the last time these two met, New Zealand led 10-7 at half-time in Wellington and lost 43-10.
It’s a coin toss now, and we’re going to buck the trend and take New Zealand by eight, which is not a sentence we expected to write on Monday. If we’re wrong, it’ll be because, firstly, the All Black forwards simply haven’t done the physical job needed, and secondly, it’ll be because Feinberg-Mngomezulu produces the 20 minutes of invention that nobody else in this fixture can, which is precisely why Erasmus has picked him.
New Zealand have won six Tests at Ellis Park, the last a 35-23 win in 2022, whilst South Africa have taken nine of the 15 played there between the two of them.
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The teams
Springboks: 15 Damian Willemse, 14 Cheslin Kolbe, 13 Jesse Kriel, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Kurt-Lee Arendse, 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, 9 Grant Williams, 8 Jasper Wiese, 7 Pieter-Steph du Toit (c), 6 Paul de Villiers, 5 Ruan Nortje, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Wilco Louw, 2 Malcolm Marx, 1 Ox Nche
Replacements: 16 Jan-Hendrik Wessels, 17 Gerhard Steenekamp, 18 Zachary Porthen, 19 Cobus Wiese, 20 Andre Esterhuizen, 21 Marco van Staden, 22 Cobus Reinach, 23 Manie Libbok
All Blacks: 15 Damian McKenzie, 14 Will Jordan, 13 Quinn Tupaea, 12 Jordie Barrett, 11 Josh Moorby, 10 Ruben Love, 9 Cam Roigard, 8 Ardie Savea (c), 7 Luke Jacobson, 6 Tupou Vaa’i, 5 Fabian Holland, 4 Josh Lord, 3 Tyrel Lomax, 2 Codie Taylor, 1 Ethan de Groot
Replacements: 16 Asafo Aumua, 17 George Bower, 18 Fletcher Newell, 19 Anton Segner, 20 Peter Lakai, 21 Kyle Preston, 22 Anton Lienert-Brown, 23 Leroy Carter
Date: Saturday, 22 August, 2026
Venue: Ellis Park, Johannesburg
Kick-off: 17:10 (local SAST), 16:10 (UK), 17:10 (France), 17:10 (South Africa), 01:10 (23 August, AEST), 03:10 (23 August, New Zealand), 12:10 (Argentina), 00:10 (23 August, JST), 11:10 (EDT)
Referee: Matthew Carley (RFU)
Assistant Referees: Karl Dickson (RFU), Nika Amashukeli (GRU)
TMO: Mike Adamson (SRU)
FPRO: Eric Gauzins (FFR)