The All Blacks have humiliated the Springboks in the final round of the Rugby Championship, running away the winners by 42 points.
» Click here to read the full match report
Final score
Springboks 15
New Zealand 57
This Sunday morning game sees New Zealand travelling to Durban to play South Africa. Join The Roar from 2:05am (AEDT) for all the live action of this Rugby Championship sixth round match.
New Zealand have already secured the Rugby Championship trophy for the 2016 season and will be looking at continuing on their impressive momentum and securing a record-equalling seventeenth victory in a row with an eye to besting the New Zealand record in a fortnight at Eden Park.
South Africa have endured a disappointing season so far but a victory over the All Blacks will go some way in restoring some pride to the jersey and give the faithful something positive looking forward.
For New Zealand, Sam Whitelock starts at lock in place of Patrick Tuipolotu who drops out of the 23, Matt Todd swaps places with Ardie Savea to start while Savea takes his place on the bench, Jerome Kaino returns from injury, pushing Liam Squire to the bench and Waisake Naholo returns to the starting side with Julian Savea dropped from the match day squad in the notable changes from last week’s side.
South Africa have recalled Faf de Klerk at halfback for the unavailable Rudy Paige in an otherwise unchanged 23 from last week’s match against the Wallabies, Coach Allister Coetzee again opting for a 6/2 bench split and a powerful reserve set of forwards and perhaps indicating a desire to beat the All Blacks up front.
Interestingly, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has not opted for specialist lock cover on his bench, instead deciding on two loose forwards in Liam Squire and Ardie Savea with the obvious intention of injecting pace toward the latter stages of the match.
There are several key match-ups to look forward to however there are none bigger than the battle between the starting second rows of Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock for New Zealand and Eben Eztebeth and Pieter Steph du Toit for South Africa.
A mouth-watering match up here between these two dynamic sets of locks with plenty of size, power and skill to burn and their respective performances tonight will be a major factor for this match along with the lineouts, an area likely to be hotly contested with two of the best in the business going at it.
Tip – New Zealand by 9. South Africa will be a huge challenge for New Zealand this evening but I simply cannot see where the Springboks will find enough points to overcome the All Blacks.
Join us here on The Roar as we cover all the action live from 2:05am AEDT.
Harry Jones
Expert
Amen
Unfortunately this isn't the Springboks playing silly games, if the blame were the players it would be an easier fix. Unfortunately politics , incompetent administrators, incompetent coaching and transformation is not an easy fix. In fact, there is nothing to fix. It is what it is.
Faith
Guest
http://www.thesportfreak.com/rugby/why-new-zealand-rugby-good/
Colm
Roar Guru
Good point, I for one enjoy watching a small country, playing innovative rugby and dominating. Very good ambassadors for the game of rugby.
Colm
Roar Guru
France challenging teams "on their day", unfortunately, doesn't exist anymore. In France, Ireland as well, we don't possess players with a high rugby IQ. When we win, it is generally by grinding teams down and dominating the scrum and line-out. Of course there are exceptions, Connacht in Ireland and Grenoble, a few others in France. New Zealand's biggest challenge will still come from SH.
Daz
Guest
Excellent Blog and some insightful commentary that followed. To coin a phrase, it was a game of two halves...The SB were bereft of ideas and did not play much rugby at all. The AB's took some time finding their rhythm and capitalised on their opponents errors. Hoping for a dry Eden Park pitch and a fast, open game to capture the imagination of all who watch Bledisloe 3.
Charlie Kimble
Guest
On the contrary Righteous, its a hollow victory. Cant you see this is not the real deal Springbok team. RFU need to ban the Boks, or at least floor bomb them out..now is not the time to gloat, we are seeing a proud rugby nation implode. They the Boks, have lost to Japan, lost to Ireland and Puma's twice. This is massive fall in their standings. They have a Token coach and token administrators with token players coming. There was no game plan. Here is the low down - 50 % of this team will be cut by next rwc to be replaced by African players, not even mixed race is allowed, if that is not racism what is? So these Bok players are not willing to put their bodies on the line, knowing no-one has his back. Any self respecting sportman knows he must fight to keep his jersey, tokenism does not work. South African coaches and players are leaving in there droves. Can hardle blame them, can we?
kurt elutin
Guest
http://www.superxv.com/hansen-coetzee-will-struggle-bok-coach-quotas/
Rugby Tragic
Roar Rookie
Nah, mate.... 9!
Akari
Roar Rookie
Strange logic. Did not the PdeV coached Boks beat the ABs 3 zip in 2009? I know there were claims that the players coached themselves. The fact is PdeV was the coach and no one has done any better than him since.
Chris
Guest
Quite clearly there are only 2 nations in world rugby that can challenge this All black side and that is England with their strength and depth and maybe France on their day. The Wallabies and boks are now dead seriously and both really do not have any talent coming through to complete at the highest level unlike England who have loads and that's a fact, after all they won the recent junior world cup.
Eric Willis
Roar Rookie
That is a good one Aucklandlaurie, and I do agree. I guess we can only let the Boks play their own silly games until they learn and put things right, and they will one day, let's hope it is not too far off, I do sort of miss them...... as I did till you're 1995.
Eric Willis
Roar Rookie
Maybe it sums up the All Blacks?
kesmcc
Roar Pro
true. the pumas are on their way but need to judge when to offload better and preform it with much more skill. had the wallabies on the ropes so many times but shot themselves in the foot with terrible offloads when they should have just been recycling.
kesmcc
Roar Pro
absolutely, ALB has been a bit of a revelation. so hard to put away and broke just about every first tackle tonight. and that offloading is something special.
Bob East
Guest
The All Blacks took big risks developing the running passing, off loading game back 5 or 6 years ago, lots of fumbles to get where we are at today. Paying off now with superior skills at speed. while the rugby world see's what they have to do to catch we how develop the 23 man game, and eliminate penalties around the ruck and scrum.
Peter Robinson
Roar Rookie
After the 1987 All Black's won the inaugural RWC they had a period of dominance like this...it wasn't if they would win..it was by how much...they scored 30-50 points every game. Back then the AB's were much much fitter than the rest of the world and their skill level was far far higher. Its exactly the same now. Just one example of the skill level difference is the 21 yr old centre ALB. His offloading is other-worldly. Check his offload to Naholo way back at the AB 22 in the leadup to the AB's first try, and his offload to Barrett for Ben Smith's try. This kid is something special, I knew he had some talent but he has taken it to a completely new level and thrived at the highest level. What a find, what a player.
Jacko
Guest
Absolutely. He was amazing last night and has been for a while now.
Jacko
Guest
Aucklander The Boks did not play any rugby at all until Lambie came in to the 10 position. It is the stupidest coaching I can remember from a SA team and if anyone believes that the best way to beat the ABs is to give them the ball in your half and ask them to run at you all day, then that is a coach who should immediatly be replaced. The Boks just did not run at the ABs at all, kept kicking EVERY time they had the ball and never even looked like scoring a try. Did the coach believe that they could defend the ABs for 80 mins? hope to score 18 and win? Its a sad day for SA rugby coaching. Thats the only sadness out of this game. ABs had 75% of the ball!!!! By choice of the SA tactics!!!!!
Whakaata
Guest
Tells me that Australia is just as bad as the Boks. Australia has absolutely no high ground here. Australia was thumped by the All Blacks in the very first game at home by 36 points. Then they were thumped by 20 points in NZ. There really isn't much if anything between South Africa and Australia, both winning their home game against each other and both getting absolutely pumped by the New Zealanders in both their home and away games. The scary thing for Australia is they get to go through it all again in a few weeks.