Would Six Nations Boks be sitting ducks for the All Blacks?
How important is regular exposure to your arch-enemy, really?
So it’s confirmed: South Africa aren’t packing their bags for the Six Nations in the immediate future. But 2025 isn’t far away, and the smart money seems to be on a move north at that point.
Enough media are writing about CVC, money and politics. I’ll leave them to it. But what would a Springbok switch imply in terms of on-field outcomes? There are plenty of issues to unpack here, including player schedules, summer versus winter, the standard of rugby between hemispheres, refereeing, implications for Australia/NZ/Pacific/Japan…and I might tackle some of those in weeks to come if the mood takes me. Today, however, I’m going to explore just one ‘area of concern’ some have raised.
There is a theory that if South Africa don’t get to play the All Blacks as often as they currently do, they’ll struggle to compete with their arch-rivals going forward.
Given that regularity (or otherwise) of fixtures is obviously the same for both sides, this concern actually assumes that New Zealand maintains a constant level of brilliance regardless of how often they play. Not completely mad given their history of excellence, so let’s assume that as a given here.
So, do those trying to knock them off their perch actually benefit from regular exposure, and struggle without it?
You can take your pick of approaches in trying to answer this question, but I’m going to try and do so by looking at three northern hemisphere teams who occasionally manage to knock over the mighty AB’s despite not being in an annual tournament with them: England, Ireland and France. I’ve picked apart their ad hoc head to head meetings over the last decade or three, trying to see if a glut of matches makes victory more likely. Or whether a long break from playing the perennial best might, counter-intuitively, be a good omen.
England
Let’s begin with England’s first success against New Zealand in the professional era. That was in 2002, when they scored the first of two straight wins (home and away) over the Kiwis. Yet they were virtual strangers: the sides hadn’t played each other since the 1999 World Cup.
The next of their rare successes over New Zealand – a game few will forget – came in 2012, when they downed the tourists 38-21 at Twickenham. It came in the middle of a period that makes for an interesting case study. That victory came fully two years after England’s last meeting with New Zealand. Before that, however, there had been five games in three years – and none of those was even close. Had England made the most of the break, applied their lessons and figured out how to beat the South Pacific maestros?
Well, the fixture list offered them regular chances to do so over the next couple of years. Six games in two years, including an away tour. And this was an England team good enough to realistically aim for another couple of All Black scalps. But though they came close, the glut of opportunity brought no further wins…
…until Yokohama 2019. In a World Cup semi-final. Number of games against the AB’s since that busy period concluded in 2014? Just one: the single-point loss in London in November 2018.
So then, is it better to spring the occasional ambush or really get to know your enemy through regular clashes? I’m not spotting much of a pattern with England – are you?
Ireland
Perhaps the Irish can teach us a little more? They’ve scored some famous wins over New Zealand in relatively recent history. In fact, starting with their 2016 Chicago triumph, they’ve won three of their last five. Which sets up the tour of New Zealand planned for this southern winter as a mouthwatering prospect.
This is a giddying deluge of success considering Ireland spent 111 years trying to score a win over New Zealand. And it began with a match that came on the back of a three-year break in clashes between these two nations. Is that another point in favour of being the ‘foe they don’t know’?
Let’s think about it. In the five years since Chicago, Ireland have taken on the Kiwis only four times. Without COVID, and depending on the annual whims of Rugby Championship formats, the Springboks would have faced them 10-15 times during the same period. Ireland took two wins from four. Despite far more regular competition with the Kiwis over many years, a 50% win ratio is about as good as South Africa have been able to hope for at any stage of the professional era.
Okay, this is a tiny sample where the men in emerald green are concerned. Let’s not forget those 111 years of Irish losing, despite a similar fixture density. Or, to stick to the more relevant professional area, the 15 games in 16 years between 1997 and 2013, the last match before Ireland’s breakthrough. Playing New Zealand roughly once a year, just like they have of late, Ireland lost them all.
Again, those looking for a pattern here will struggle (but feel free to try). I’m inclined to think that victories against the Kiwis are simply down to becoming a better rugby team – but that becoming a better rugby team has no correlation to regular exposure to New Zealand.
(That doesn’t mean regular exposure to some quality sides isn’t important, of course! Maybe it’s no coincidence that the Dublin wins of 2018 and 2021 came on the backs of confidence-building Ireland tours to South Africa and Australia respectively.)
France
And so to everybody’s favourite All Black slayers: the French. The first place the mind goes is to Les Bleus shock World Cup knockout coups in 1999 and 2007, of course. So here’s the context for those.
France didn’t play New Zealand once from 1995 to 1999. They then got hammered 54-7 in Wellington that June, before lining up against the Kiwis in a World Cup knockout match in London just a few weeks later. A classic ambush that ended 43-31 to France.
The sides knew each other better going into the Cardiff World Cup game in ’07. They had played four times, home and away, over the previous 11 months. All of them had ended in comprehensive and mostly enormous defeats for the French. But in the game that mattered most? Frogs beat Kiwis 20-18.
Make of that what you will…
It was two years before the sides met again, with the French rubbing Kiwi beaks in it with victory at the old House of Pain in Dunedin. But then came 14 winless games in 13 years, a drought finally ended by that inspired effort in Paris a couple of months ago. It’s worth noting that this latest match also followed the longest gap in fixtures between the sides since that 1995-99 period: nigh on three and a half years.
Yet we all know that the reason France went 13 years without a win over the All Blacks – a close call in the 2011 World Cup final notwithstanding – is that the French simply weren’t very good for the better part of that period. They have now become good again, hence the recent triumph in Paris.
Unless you can see something I can’t in these results, I’d again venture to suggest that beating the All Blacks is about getting your rugby house in order, not playing them with any particular regularity. And catching them when they haven’t seen you for a while certainly doesn’t appear to be any worse an idea than playing them multiple times annually.
To drill down on that last point: consider the context of games like Twickenham 2012, Dublin 2021 and Paris 2021. All home games for the upset winners. Could it be that hosting the haka brigade on an occasional rather than regular basis makes the most of home advantage? When the All Blacks coming to town doesn’t happen every year, you’re going to have a stadium packed with starved home supporters fired up to scream for 80 minutes. The French fans hadn’t seen their favourite opponents in nearly four years – and the outpouring at St Denis was like a sixteenth man.
(Maybe Australia should have thought about this when they signed deals to host Bledisloe Cup games in Sydney for all eternity. Remember when they played the Kiwis at the refreshing venue that was the MCG in 2007? And broke a three-year losing streak?)
With those musings out of the way…
I’ll finish by making one thing clear: if the Springboks venture north after 2025, I still believe they must continue to play the All Blacks on a regular basis. Not because I think that’s going to help them beat New Zealand more often (see above), but because it’s the greatest rivalry in world rugby, produces thrilling games and the chance to beat them is life-affirming stuff for us South Africans. We’ve been missing old-fashioned three-test tours since the last one in 1996, and if the Boks leave the Rugby Championship, the tours with the Kiwis (and Australia) must return.
If it pans out like that – and this is a huge, essential, critical ‘if’ in my book – then South Africa will be exposed to a variety of styles in the Northern Hemisphere, whilst still getting to play its traditional rivals too. No other team in the world would have such a big foot in both camps. And that might just make the future Springboks very hard to beat.
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