We need to look through the Springboks’ performance against England - the lack of energy at the breakdown, the wayward kicking and tactical confusion - because all these will be righted in the final. We need to look through and see if we can find some fundamental weakness. A weakness that won’t be swept away by focus and motivation and aggression. I only see one definitive, irremediable weakness. Their loose forwards are slow, and they lack the running and handling skills of Sam Cane, Ardie Savea and Shannon Frizell. Duane Vermeulen remains a solid workhorse but lacks the athleticism to make a difference outside a zone three or four metres either side of a ruck. Hardly surprising. He’s 37 years old. Siya Kolisi is not the same player he was before his knee injury and while Pieter-Steph du Toit is still a fine player, no one is speaking of him as the Player of the Tournament he was four years ago.
The Springboks’ semifinal win made it clear, if we ever needed reminding, you have to at least break even in the set pieces for as long as the game lasts if you are going to beat them. We need to be meticulous and powerful at every lineout and every scrum, and we need to use that platform to attack the breakdown, moving bodies, freeing ball over and over again, accurately, relentlessly, for as long as it takes.
When the game moves from the formal theatre of scrums and lineouts, for the All Blacks to win it has to move not to the sort of informal give-it-a-go we saw from France in the final 20 minutes of their quarter-final, but to a semi-structured, cleverly conceived, well-executed pattern of play that has not - in the first instance - the scoring of tries as its aim, but the controlling of where the game is played on the field.
For example, it is often the case that teams stuck in their 22 have the halfback hoist a high kick close to the touchline or a kicker put the ball out on the 10-metre mark. Not bad, but back to a lineout, back to a driving maul, back to a slow, grinding match. As an alternative, the All Blacks have cleverly embraced the old dictum: “the last man kicks” - meaning the ball should be passed to free up space and provide the opportunity to run out of defence for as far as possible, before the last man, usually a winger, kicks down the field and keeps the ball in play.
The All Blacks’ defence has been a revelation since the disappointment of the opening match against France. Disciplined, connected, powerful. It has to be the same again. Only better. Particularly against the Springboks, the tackler needs support quickly, the All Blacks’ second wave needs to be there a split-second before the South African bulk arrives and hippos with their hands over the ball need to be sat on their backsides.
There are some things coaches can drill into players, and players can plan and prepare to execute these things before a game: set-pieces, body-position at the breakdown, passing, goal-kicking. But no coach can train a player to react to a situation by chipping, chasing, regathering, weaving and scoring, or react to receiving a pass two metres from the line by giving it back half a second later so someone else scores. It’s in the blood, put there early in the backyards and the windy playgrounds of our funny little faraway islands. It’s our special magic. If the forwards can keep clearing the stage for 80 minutes or more, we will all be on our feet even before the curtain comes down. If not, we can still win, but get ready for a re-run of Auckland 2011.
