The All Blacks celebrate Richie Mo’unga's try against the Springboks. Photo / photosport.nz
The All Blacks celebrate Richie Mo’unga's try against the Springboks. Photo / photosport.nz
OPINION:
If the All Blacks were shaping up more as myth this time last year, they have taken another step towards becoming legend.
They wouldn’t say they dusted off the Boks without so much as breaking a sweat, but bar a wobbly patch in the first quarter of the secondhalf, the All Blacks didn’t appear to have too much trouble in getting the job done.
The scoreline was every bit as comprehensive as it seemed and if the margin of victory had been yet higher, that wouldn’t have been an unfair reflection of how in control the All Blacks were.
South Africa really didn’t do much to trouble them. The visitors’ vaunted physicality did rise a level or two early in the second half when they brought the bomb squad on, and the rolling maul try they scored will irk the forwards.
But other than that, the Boks came with their usual confrontational mindset and thought that would be enough.
It was nowhere near enough and the All Blacks didn’t have too much trouble coping with the sheer enormity of the Boks.
In the separate stakes game of set-piece and collision warfare, the All Blacks will feel more than comfortable with the control they had on their own possession and the resistance they showed without it.
Just how far the All Blacks are along their growth journey is hard to know just yet, but without doubt, they are at the upper reaches of the physical scale and no one is going to be over the top of them anymore.
But the real evolution in this team is in the way they use the ball now. From previously looking so timid and unsure of where space might be on the field, the All Blacks of 2023 come hard out of the blocks looking for it.
The old failing of the old All Blacks was that whenever they were confronted by the school bully, they couldn’t find a way to generate momentum, bump forward and accelerate their pass-and-catch to systematically break down a defence.
This new All Blacks side has found the solution to that particular problem, and for the first 20 minutes played rock-and-roll rugby — the likes of which was so enterprising and far removed from anything previously seen that it left those witnessing it feeling a little like how their ancestors must have felt on first seeing Elvis.
It was high-energy movement that was non-stop.
There was nothing laboured or clunky, no plodding through the set-up with the inevitable out-the-back ball long-signalled.
Instead, the forwards used fast feet to dance past the flying defenders and steal a little space here and there to enable quick recycling and the occasional off-load.
Will Jordan popped up everywhere for the All Blacks aggainst the Springboks. Photo / Photosport
The point of it all, or so it certainly seemed, was to never let the Boks get a good look at the ball carrier and line him up.
There was no repeating of patterns, no easy way to see where the ball was going next and it wasn’t just the pace that the All Blacks played which left South Africa gasping - it was the accuracy and certainty.
And the bravery. Will Jordan was willing to pop up everywhere; Jordie Barrett pass-kicked at times where others wouldn’t have dared and Brodie Retallick and Scott Barrett effortlessly switched between playing the role of bruising lock, ball-playing first-five and both even made it to the wing a couple of times.
But the real star was Shannon Frizell, who somewhat irritatingly has come of age as the sort of bruising blindside the country desperately needs, just as he is about to head off to Japan.
Still, he’s here for the remainder of the year and he’s not got a big job to do — which is to keep playing the way he is.
Shannon Frizell was the All Blacks' biggest star at Mt Smart. Photo / Photosport
Which is exactly what the All Blacks need to do.
They were good last week in Argentina and better again this week in Auckland — and these incremental improvements from game to game are what World Cup years are all about.
There may not be a huge amount of time before the World Cup kicks off, but there is enough and arguably the most important improvement was in the way the All Blacks found a way to scrap their way back into the contest in the final quarter.
They were maybe in danger of drifting a little bit with 20 minutes to go, but the bench came on and the energy lifted, the cohesion came back and the tries they needed to get home with plenty to spare came.
New Zealand 35 (Aaron Smith, Shannon Frizell, Will Jordan, Richie Mo’unga tries; Mo’unga 3 cons, 3 pens)
South Africa 20 (Malcolm Marx, Cheslin Kolbe, Kwagga Smith tries; Kolbe con, Faf de Klerk pen).
