Springboks vs All Blacks: what the heavenly Ellis Park Test means to world rugby

Let’s be up front about this. The Springboks 27 – All Blacks 38 Tests at Ellis Park last weekend was not only one of the greatest rugby Tests in history, it was one of the most gripping and intense sporting occasions in recent times.

Ellis Park is the Springboks fortress.

It is where they won the final of Rugby World Cup 1995 with Nelson Mandela presiding over the Test in a Springboks number six jersey.

Before the final, a huge jetliner emerged from a seeming nowhere and burst through the Johannesburg skies towards Ellis Park. It was flying so low that it looked as if it were going to land on the pitch itself.

On Sunday morning (Australian time), the same stunt was pulled. There was the massive plane and the same massive rush of excitement as it roared (just) over the stands.

And once again it enthused the crowd, which hardly needed any further encouragement to scream and shout for the blood and defeat of the All Blacks.

The crowd showed that it wanted to be part of the slaughter by chanting ‘ole, ole, ole’ throughout the All Blacks haka.

One of the achievements of the All Blacks in winning this Test, in such a cauldron of antipathy against them, is that minutes before the end of the Test a stream of gutted Springboks supporters began their sad, heads-down departure from the ground.

The fortress that had been overwhelmed in a way few, even diehard All Blacks supporters, could have predicted.

Readers of The Roar will know that I have been critical of the Springboks style of play virtually since the era of professional rugby.

There has been too much kicking, too much thuggish play and too little of the brilliant back play that Springboks of yesteryear (Danie Craven, Cecil Moss, Wilf Rosenberg and John Gainsford among a glittering academy of gifted runners and tryscorers over the decades) have lit up rugby fields around the world.

Heyneke Meyer, now in his second year as the Springboks coach, was criticised for maintaining this second-rate kick/chase/win penalties game.

This year, though, he has begun to widen the options for his team by getting more width on the team’s running game and less reliance on the kick-first policy of previous years.

The Springboks, the new, running Springboks, have demolished the Pumas and the Wallabies this season.

And at Ellis Park they scored four tries against the All Blacks, the first time the number one side in the world (for the past 46 months!) has conceded so many in a Tri-Nations/The Rugby Championship match since 2010 against the Wallabies.

The Springboks have now won 10 of their last 12 Tests, the only losses being to the All Blacks.

They are developing the all backs game that the All Blacks have played since 1905 when British journalists gave them a nick-name, all backs, that morphed into the famous All Blacks name that has defined them as a team ever since.

The determination of the Springboks to attack the All Blacks with width initially unsettled the visitors.

They stacked the mid-field defence in the belief that this is where the Springboks were going to make their major attacks. The All Blacks left spaces out wide because of this compressed defence.

Bryan Habana, in particular, has the pace and the skills to exploit the space he was given.

He scored two tries, virtually within minutes of each other. A turning point in the Test came, in my opinion, when Habana, after his second try, had to retire from the Test with a pulled hamstring muscle.

The loss of Habana was important, so too was the lack of energy and flair in the Springboks halves. Fourie du Preez has been the stand-out Springboks halfback in the professional era.

But his game suits the old Springboks kick and chase game. His pass is secure but not long. He no longer makes those devastating runs from scrums.

He is now a defensive halfback.

This became apparent after half-time when the Springboks won their kick-off. There was no half back to clear the ball. Du Preez was standing near the halfway expecting the All Blacks bomb.

The point here is that it is all very well to try and emulate the All Blacks fast-paced, attacking game.

But teams that play this way have to have extreme fitness. For when the play moves wide, breakdown wins become potential try-scoring opportunities. A kicking team does not have to worry about this, on defence or attack.

It was noticeable that the pace of the match affected the Springboks far more than the All Blacks. In the last 20 minutes, the Springbok forwards could hardly get off the ground at lineouts, for instance. The All Blacks played most of this period with only 14 players but still dominated their tired opponents.

Another point that needs to be made is that the fast game needs alert and skilful halves.

Aaron Smith has now established himself as the best halfback in world rugby.

His pace to the ball and his speed and accuracy of passing, his pin-point high kicks which are all contestable (except the deliberate touch-finders) and his deadly sniping give the All Blacks an edge on attack that they didn’t have in their 2011 Rugby World Cup team.

It is interesting that few pundits have picked up on how Richie McCaw is changing his game from the fetcher to the tackler mode. McCaw was involved in 26 tackles in the Test.

But the turnovers mainly came from Kieran Read, the best number eight in world rugby and New Zealand’s best ever, in my opinion.

The All Blacks had to make 19 tackles in their own 22 and they missed just three of them.

The Springboks missed seven tackles out of 22 in their own 22, with four of these missed tackles coming in the burst made by Ben Smith to score the All Blacks opening try.

Rugby has received a hard press, especially in Australia. This Test was a demonstration that the laws are perfectly fine and that teams with the will, passion, heart and skills can play brilliantly within these laws.

It is a pleasure to say that the referee, the Welshman Nigel Owens, gave splendid, masterly exhibition of how the game should refereed.

There were 14 penalties in total in the Test, nine against the All Blacks and five against the Springboks.

‘The Beast’ was lucky not to be given a yellow card for his ‘sorry Mr Referee’ shot on McCaw’s jaw. Liam Messam was unlucky with his yellow card. And Owen Franks fully deserved his yellow card.

Throughout, though, Owens seemed to be enjoying his close-up view of two mighty teams going at each other with play often streaming up the field and then down it and then up again.

How much enjoyment, too, must the millions of viewers around the world, in the Americas, the UK, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand have got from this Test.

I have sometimes suggested that rugby is a blank verse game, sometimes too windy and rhetorical but sometimes, but not often enough, soaring and passionate and life-enhancing in its terrible and thrilling beauty.

Andrew Denton once memorably said that great sport can be ‘Shakespeare on steroids.’

This, to me, is an apt description (without the drug implications being applied to the players) for this Test.

A sporting code that can produce a spectacle as thrilling as the Ellis Park Test of 2013 has a lot going for it in its quest to become a formidable world game.