{"id":894270,"date":"2026-09-16T16:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894270\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T16:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:24:10","slug":"john-smit-all-blacks-struggles-showed-super-rugby-exit-was-less-traumatic-for-springboks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894270\/","title":{"rendered":"John Smit: All Blacks struggles showed Super Rugby exit was ‘less traumatic’ for Springboks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Springboks<\/a> captain John Smit was shocked that the All Blacks rarely opted to engage with South Africa in the set-piece battle.<\/p>\n

Rassie Erasmus\u2019 men claimed a 3-1 series victory over New Zealand in Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry, with the triumph based on scrum, lineout, maul and kicking.<\/p>\n

They outplayed Dave Rennie\u2019s side in all those areas, with the All Blacks<\/a> looking to move the ball whenever they had the opportunity.<\/p>\n

All Blacks\u2019 former front five strength<\/p>\n

While the best Kiwi teams in the past have always looked to be adventurous with ball in hand, they have also had a strong front five which could match the best in the world.<\/p>\n

The New Zealanders also had the ability to turn an opposition\u2019s perceived strength into a weakness, but they somewhat ran away from that set-piece fight against the Boks.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of the things that was a surprise to me and you can maybe look at the history of where our two teams are, from a provincial point of view or franchise point of view,\u201d Smit<\/a> said on the I Love Rugby podcast, featuring Wallabies and All Blacks greats George Gregan and Andrew Mehrtens respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe All Blacks were surprising to me, every ball they had was channel one, they didn\u2019t want to give the Boks too many scrum feeds, which they were good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Zealand were better up front in the final Test but, for the majority of the series, they failed to cope with the power and technique of the Springboks scrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a ferocious scrum and it has been building and getting better and better, and they put a lot of work into it,\u201d Smit said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruth be told, we\u2019ve got Ox [Nche] on the one side, we\u2019ve got Malcolm [Marx] in the middle and then we\u2019ve got Wilco Louw at 140-odd kgs; you add a little bit of work and technique to that, it gets hard to stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been giving this a lot of thought around the dominance, for me the surprise was the All Blacks wanted to get away from the scrum [and lineout] as much as possible; the quick throws to the prop at the front of the lineout.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry: Eight things we learnt including the All Blacks\u2019 \u2018two-fold\u2019 issue, while Springboks\u2019 old dogs still have bite<\/a><\/p>\n

Smit duly believes that South Africa\u2019s exit from Super Rugby has had a negative impact on the All Blacks.<\/p>\n

While many of the Springboks players are in competitions where the scrum is more valued, those based in New Zealand and Australia are playing the same type of ball-in-hand style every week.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re going to come up short\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get tested in the Investec Champions Cup against some of the best scrums, we get tested in the URC, so the scrum and the kicking game has remained of massive importance in the competitions that we\u2019re playing,\u201d the ex-Boks skipper said.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSuper Rugby is still such an exciting tournament to win but there\u2019s not a huge emphasis on kicking tactics and set-piece; it\u2019s more about playing the All Black way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are not a huge amount of teams that are going to really scare you from a scrum point of view and that\u2019s a difficult one to fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the All Blacks have got the personnel but scrumming is like a UFC fighter. You can train in the gym as much as you want, but if you don\u2019t put enough time in the ring and you don\u2019t scrum every week, and you don\u2019t get tested by hard opposition, it\u2019s very difficult to understand what the level is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt\u2019s sad, we all played in Super Rugby and I still think that\u2019s the greatest tournament that\u2019s ever lived, but I think the exit for us has probably been less traumatic because we\u2019ve gone over to a competition that is a little easier from a travel perspective but it\u2019s also tested us in different conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe seasons differ, the conditions differ, the fields differ \u2013 there are some artificial pitches \u2013 and we\u2019ve got teams that want to engage up front and, if you don\u2019t have a kicking game and a kick receive game, you\u2019re going to come up short.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Rating every Springboks forward in Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry: \u2018Most valuable prop in Test rugby\u2019 shows his worth but Rassie Erasmus \u2018worryingly light\u2019 in one area<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Springboks captain John Smit was shocked that the All Blacks rarely opted to engage with South Africa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,818,1182,1736,44,760,85],"class_list":["post-894270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}