All Black Ardie Savea reaches 100 tests in crucial game against Springboks

THE FACTS

• Ardie Savea will play his 100th test when the All Blacks face South Africa on Saturday.
• Savea is seen as the team’s spiritual leader, known for his physical and inspirational impact.
• There is speculation about Savea’s potential as captain, though Scott Barrett remains in the role.

Ardie Savea has shown he has the physical strength to keep running with oversized South Africans on his back, and with the All Blacks facing their defining test of 2025, he has the chance to prove he also has the mental strength to carry the full weight of the nation.

Savea, who will play his 100th test on Saturday night, is the sort of talismanic figure on whom so many famous victories of the past have been built.

These big occasions need a hero. That’s the formula that works for the All Blacks – the pressure comes on and someone uses it to crush themselves into a diamond and play the best game of their career.

Must-win games always need a character to write themselves into folklore with a Heraclean performance and Savea leads the cast of candidates with the potential to do this at Eden Park.

Savea might not be the captain, but he is the spiritual leader of the team: the beating heart. He’s the All Black who captures the greatest global attention; the player whom South Africa are arguably most wary of because they have seen how he can instil belief in those around him when he charges into contact, hits a green wall and somehow stays on his feet, keeps pumping his legs and fights the ball an extra 5m forward.

And they know that he can not only defy the odds with his refusal to yield physically to bigger men, but that he can also lift a nation with the way he can canter in the open spaces by transforming himself into an outside back.

Loose forward Ardie Savea on the charge for the All Blacks last year. Photo / SmartFrame

The Boks have a huge range of qualities, and some special athletes, but they don’t have anything quite like Savea. Deep down, what’s troubling the visitors is the way fate has conspired to enable the All Blacks’ most inspirational figure to win his 100th cap in such a defining game.

It almost feels as if there has been some divine intervention to bring these two factors together, but however events conspired, it feels right that Savea’s landmark game is one of enormous wider significance.

South Africa know the power of a cult figure having built their past two World Cup successes on their unifying and inspirational captain Siya Kolisi.

Players and fans like a rallying point: a figurehead who brings team values to life and gives the story a human face.

Kolisi has been the symbol of a new, upwardly mobile South Africa where troubled upbringings don’t automatically lead to troubled adulthoods.

The All Blacks have arguably missed a trick by not backing Savea as their captain and using him as the symbol of modern New Zealand: the son of immigrant Samoan parents whose pre-match routine involves drinking lattes at hipster coffee houses while he reads from the Bible.

He’s every bit a traditionalist and conformist to core All Blacks values of humility, discipline and service, and yet he loves a bit of bling, knows his fashion brands and how to sell himself on TikTok.

If the All Blacks were once a collection of Pākehā farm boys from the hinterland sent out into the world with the Protestant mindsets and expectation of their parents, they no longer are.

The current All Blacks are 75% Polynesian and Māori, mostly urban. Perhaps they represent a vision of what New Zealand could look like and achieve more generally if it was driven – institutionally, legislatively and socially – by a similar culture of inclusivity.

And the question hangs over the All Blacks, specifically, about whether they could achieve more if Savea, rather than being the spiritual leader, was the actual leader.

It’s a thought that’s hard to keep at bay with memories still fresh of what being captain of Moana Pasifika did for Savea in Super Rugby this year.

He produced an almost miraculous campaign of heroics that were driven by his connection to the club and to his heritage. It’s impossible not to wonder whether there would be a similar amplification of his superpowers had the All Blacks opted to make him captain.

It’s a question, however, that seems destined to remain moot as head coach Scott Robertson has nailed his colours firmly to Scott Barrett’s mast and change is most certainly not in the offing.

But the circumstances of this Saturday are such that Savea, in becoming the 15th All Black to make a century of appearances, will be the focal point.

It will be billed as his night and all of New Zealand will be hoping the man who so easily and memorably carried the responsibility of being Moana’s talismanic leader will feel equally comfortable doing the same for the All Blacks at Eden Park and prove just as inspirational.

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.