Damian de Allende of South Africa charges forward during the Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South African Springboks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
Damian de Allende of South Africa charges forward during the Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South African Springboks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
OPINION:
There are two distinct narratives emerging from the cataclysmic clash between New Zealand and South Africa.
There's the Springboks version of events, which essentially pins their two-point loss on the unseen hand of fate twisting uncontrollable factors the way of the All Blacks.
Their version essentially says that butfor the odd bounce of that cursed oval ball and the devil of a law book that requires the fallibility of human interpretation to be applied, they would have been on the right side of the result.
It's a plausible assessment, founded on the undeniable truth that South Africa did a number on the All Blacks at the lineout, squeezed a few penalties out of them in the scrum and recast Rieko Ioane and his free-wheeling chums in the backline as crash test dummies.
The Springboks had the All Blacks rattled, they pressured them into their highest error count of the year and left them playing without any real shape or structure for much of the second half.
It makes perfect sense then for the Boks to believe that they should dust themselves off this week, recharge the heavy artillery and come at the All Blacks on the Gold Coast with the same ultra conservative plan that they produced in Townsville.
And maybe this week, the Gods will be kinder and the ball, when it needs to, will bounce their way and bring the victory they were just three minutes away from securing.
Damian de Allende of South Africa charges forward during the Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South African Springboks. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
New Zealand's version of events has many areas of overlap but doesn't lean so heavily on this idea that it was essentially luck that separated the two teams.
The All Blacks accept they failed to deal with the pressure South Africa exerted. Their set-piece creaked more than they expected.
Their micro skill execution was mostly poor. With the exception of Jordie Barrett, they didn't catch the high balls that they knew would rain down upon them.
Not once did their driving maul trouble the Boks and the continuity they craved, to aerobically stress an opponent they suspect isn't fit enough, couldn't be built on a foundation of dropped balls and wild passes.
Where the narratives diverge is that the All Blacks don't accept that it was luck which brought them the win, but instead their intent.
They huffed and puffed and muddled and bungled for large tracts of the game without playing the way they wanted, but ultimately, they earned their points through the commitment to play multi-skilled, high-tempo rugby, however flawed and erratic the execution.
If it was luck that separated the two teams, it was luck that the All Blacks earned. They played just enough good rugby to drag themselves to the win; produced just enough passages of continuity to pressure the Boks into conceding 19 points.
Jordie Barrett of the All Blacks celebrates after winning the Rugby Championship match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the South African Springboks. Photo / Getty Images.
And essentially, the difference between the two versions of events is the responses they will induce this week because despite the closeness of the game, the real story is that the All Blacks are on the right tactical path and the Springboks aren't.
The All Blacks know they were exposed as deficient in areas they know they can't be. They know that this week, they must ensure that their intent is supported by a precision and control that was not evident in Townsville.
That may see them make a number of personnel changes – shift the uncrushable force of Ethan Blackadder to the blindside and bring in Luke Jacobson at No 8.
Return Anton Lienert-Brown to the centre, put Rieko Ioane on one wing, Sevu Reece on the other and start with Brad Weber at halfback.
But they need more than just new faces. They need to analyse how they can better stress the Boks defence and prevent them swarming the way they did.
The All Blacks will put themselves through an honest and at times galling review, in the hope that it leads to them being able to play with the freedom and expression that defines who they are.
They will see that their macro approach is right but their micro execution needs plenty of work.
Ardie Savea. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
The Boks, on the other hand, appear to have bought their own story that despite not delivering the victory, their tactical approach is in no need of refinement.
They seem to believe that if they turn up and kick 95 per cent of their possession away again, it will deliver them the lucky bounce that didn't go their way in Townsville.
They might just be deluding themselves, though, because history has shown that the All Blacks are the world's great responders.
They only walk into a gun fight with a knife once and the Boks need to make the harder, colder assessment that they are going to need to play more rugby and rely on something more concrete than luck to beat the All Blacks this week.
They must accept that they got their execution right, but their game plan wrong.
The justification for kicking the ball as much as they do is that it delivers results, but here they are now having lost four tests this year already.
And here they are now, buoyed by the panic they induced in the All Blacks, but perhaps not facing the harder to stomach fact that their strategy didn't produce a victory and that the rugby style they say is in their DNA has in fact only twice in the last 17 tests been good enough to beat the All Blacks.
