Speed and Line Outs the Key to All Blacks Success
The New Zealand All Blacks head into this weekend’s Tri-Nation match against the South Africa Springboks brimming with confidence. The All Blacks dealt a whooping to the Springboks to the tune of 32-12 in last week’s Tri-Nations Cup opener. The key to this victory seemed to be super star Victor Matfield. His regular prowess on-set plays were stifled by the All Blacks, which many are saying was the key to victory.
Losing Rossouw
The Springboks took another hit heading into this weekend, as lock Danie Rossouw suffered an injury in training and is now questionable for the next match. To make matters worse, Rossouw was meant to replace Bakkies Botha, who was suspended for the rest of the tournament because of a head-butt on New Zealand’s Jimmy Cowan. The Springboks coach Peter de Villiers called up Flip Van der Merwe a day earlier as a reserve because of the loss of Botha. However, now with another injury, de Villiers may find himself another man down. Van der Merwe is not expected to start, however, if Rossouw is still not fit come the weekend he will be replaced by Andries Bekker, which moves Merwe to the bench.
All Blacks Speed
In the opening match, the All Blacks managed to handle the massive South African forwards. Originally thought to dominate the All Blacks due to their size, the Springboks front line was exposed by the speed of the All Blacks.
The Springboks missed a great deal of tackles up front, which can only be attributed to the fact that New Zealand was making the big men do a little bit more moving then they are used to.
All Blacks captain Richie McCaw had this to say of the All Blacks ability to expose the Springboks lack of speed: “Last week it was like that. We were going forward to a lot of stuff and they were going back. There were a few gaps because of that…Certainly if you can hold the balls for a while and you can move their big fellas around I think you get rewarded as the game goes on.”
Line-Out Dominance
In their last encounter, the All Blacks were also able to dominate on the line-out. The New Zealand dominance was certainly not expected heading into the Auckland clash last week, as the Springboks own perhaps the best line-out player in the world, Victor Matfield.
The All Blacks stifled Matfield as they were able to win all of their own set plays while stealing a few of the Springboks in the process. The big lock did not seem to get in rhythm as the All Blacks picked away at the Springboks in that part of the field.
The All Blacks won marginally in the scrum, but their domination of set plays led them to victory. If the All Blacks are looking to repeat their performance, they know they are going to have to continue their strong play.
McCaw knows that the Springboks will be hungrier this time around and his side will have to continue to improve their play, stating “We didn’t have it all our way, there is room to improve there…If we think that just turning up and doing the same again is going to be good enough we’ll come second in that department.”
The Springboks will come into Wellington understanding the repercussions of a loss and should be ready to play. However, if the All Blacks are able to use their speed in the scrum and keep Matfield at bay throughout set plays, they have a very good chance of taking a large lead to Australia.
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