Two unbeaten sides, one question: who is the greatest? When the second-ranked All Blacks arrive in South Africa in August for the four-Test Rugby's Greatest Rivalry series, they will meet a Springbok side that swept England, Scotland and Wales in the opening half of the Nations Championship. New Zealand answered with wins over France, Italy and Ireland. Now the pundits are picking the series apart — and the man who coached the All Blacks to the 2015 World Cup thinks there is a way through.
Speaking on The Rugby Unity podcast, Steve Hansen argued that the key is to refuse the world champions the game they crave.
"I like doing the unexpected against them because that's what they don't want," Hansen said. "They just want to be able to go chug, chug, chug, chug, chug."
He believes the Springboks' reputation for pace is built on the damage they do first. "Yes, they'll tell you they play at pace. But that's after they've physically bashed you. Then they'll speed it up because you've got nothing left," Hansen said. "It looks like they're going faster, but they're really not. They've just got more energy because you're knackered trying to deal with their physicality."
His prescription is to deny South Africa dominance in the collision and to rethink the aerial contest. "South Africa want physicality. So, as the ball-carrier, you can't allow them to physically dominate you," Hansen said, urging ball-carriers to use footwork into contact. On the kicking game he added: "South Africa are really good in the air. They don't actually catch that many contestable kicks, but they force you to drop most of them because they jump and create havoc while legitimately contesting."
Former Scotland lock Jim Hamilton shares Hansen's belief that New Zealand can trouble the Boks — but he is more guarded about the scale of the task. On The Big Jim Show podcast, Hamilton said New Zealand are the only side capable of it, while stopping short of predicting a series win.
"New Zealand is the only team on the planet that can beat South Africa at the minute," Hamilton said. "I actually think that the All Blacks can beat South Africa in one Test match, just in one. That isn't to say that they're going to go there and win a series."
Hamilton pointed to the New Zealand pack — praising forwards coach Jason Ryan's scrum and lineout drive against Ireland — and to a harder physical edge, singling out Luke Jacobson as the kind of abrasive forward now in the mix. What tempers his optimism is fatigue on the other side. "South Africa have had a long season, a very very long season," Hamilton said. "I just wonder how Rassie will balance that out and set up his team to play the All Blacks."
That balancing act is already under way. Rassie Erasmus has named a 43-man squad and split it into two groups, welcoming back heavyweights including Eben Etzebeth, Siya Kolisi, Franco Mostert and Handre Pollard, with the aim of giving everyone a chance to stake a claim before the series. The Springboks open their winter against Argentina in Buenos Aires on 8 August before the Rivalry Tests begin.
For all the talk of a rebuild, the visitors are not short of belief. Hansen's parting message was that once the Boks are denied what they expect, doubt creeps in: deny them dominance, he argued, "and then they start to question themselves." The four Tests, spread across August and September, will decide whether New Zealand can turn that theory into scoreboard.
