The Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series has reached the halfway point, and the score is even at one win apiece. The All Blacks claimed victory at Ellis Park and the Springboks took their revenge in Cape Town. But very few of the two chapters in the storybook thus far have been either fair or balanced. The contrasts in attitudes to the game have been brutally black-and-white. There is no room for compromise in this argument about the present and future of the game of rugby.
The raging rows continue well after the game has finished, as the flames of dissent are fanned in the mainstream media and on social media. The Boks want to scrum for penalties [seven over two Tests so far] while the All Blacks want clean ball [only one penalty in their favour].
In the red corner, Dave Rennie says the Boks are walking around to their left to target the New Zealand tight-head: “It’s still a bit of an issue for us because they’re able to walk around and go straight through our tight-head”, starting with Malcolm Marx edging left with his brake foot at set-up.
Over in the blue corner, ‘Rassie’ Erasmus claims his men are scrumming straight ahead - “Don’t come with that nonsense, and say we’re walking around and try and put those things out in the media. We don’t want to stay quiet and just say ‘oh yeah, you’re right, we’re walking around’. We’re not f***ing walking around. We’re scrumming through.”
That media micro-squabble is typical of the controversy surrounding the RGR series as a whole. There simply is no middle ground about how the game of rugby should be played upon which both parties can agree – except perhaps, the shape of the ball to be used. But the consensus stops there.
Nowhere are the contrasts better highlighted than in the scoring pattern over the first two Tests, divided by quarters:
One side is strong at the start of the game, the other is mighty at the end. The hosts score by systematically working their way into the opposition 22, the visitors can convert opportunities from any part of the field.
South Africa has scored all of its four tries in the first half from start-points inside the ‘red zone’, and it dominates first quarter scoring by 27 points to 12. New Zealand has scored four of its nine tries from launches outside the 22, it heads the try-count in the second half 5-0 and boasts near-complete control scoreboard control in that period, 33 points to three.
The Springboks have kicked seven penalty goal attempts in the course of the series, the All Blacks none at all. This is not just a contest between two sides with different approaches to the game, something more is at stake. The RGR series is no more, or less than a battle for the soul of rugby.
It is perhaps no accident that the Springboks have also returned to their more aggressive, 2023 World Cup, Jacques Nienaber-inspired pattern of defence as New Zealand have waxed the more dangerous of the two teams on attack. Where Irishman Jerry Flannery’s system combined more selective blitzes with a squarer ‘read-and-react’ pattern, Rassie’s charges have pushed out their chests reverted to the full metal jacket, out-to-in rush system now mentored by Nienaber at Leinster.
Dave Rennie’s new squad has done as well as anyone dared hope in terms of their planning to exploit the various moving parts of that system. In the first Test at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, one the recurring themes was the idea of matching up a big man with skills on the edge [#6 Tupou Vaa’i] on a smaller defender [#9 Grant Williams].
The New Zealand coaches identified the lineout as the scenario where they could exploit the match-up the best, with Williams defending in the tram-lines and Vaa’i as the blind-side flanker often left on the near-side edge. They used ‘21’ [one midfield phase before coming back to the near-side edge] and ‘31’ [two phases into midfield first] switchback patterns as their weapon of choice.
The first hint occurred in the 7th minute of the match:
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 4, 2026
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 4, 2026
In both clips, the basic idea is to exploit the edge defender by matching him up against a superior attacker – either the size and soft hands of Vaa’i, or the finishing power of Will Jordan. The ‘21’, with only one hit into midfield before the ball returns back whence it came, does not achieve the effect intended. The Springbok D has kept its width and is covering the sideline in both instances.
The clue to future success occurs later in the first clip, when the All Blacks rinse-and-repeat the same pattern on phases 3-6. After some inter-passing and two tackle busts up the middle by Ardie Savea and Cam Roigard, the defence is more compressed and less able to manage the edge:
This is the situation New Zealand really wants to achieve, with 10 metres separating the final defender from the last attacker. The insertion of one extra phase in midfield did the trick in the 23rd minute:
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 4, 2026
With two phases run into midfield instead of one, the Springbok forward umbrella has moved that much further across the pitch, anticipating flow to the Kiwi right. When the ball returns to the left, the three South African forwards in support are too far away and Grant Williams has too much ground to make up on Vaa’i to prevent a scoring offload:
Sumary
The RGR series between the twin titans of rugby, South Africa and New Zealand, is proving to be everything it promised to be, and more. The clash of styles which makes for the greatest of pugilistic fights there is, with diametrically-opposed views of the function of set-piece; one team stronger at the start and the other at the end; the hosts focused on defence and kicking goals, the tourists on attack and scoring tries. There is more at work in this series than just a contest between the two best teams in the world, it is a battle for the future of the game.
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