Leroy Carter to make his test debut<\/a> Saturday, replacing Rieko Ioane.<\/p>\nIoane\u2019s attacking play has lacked sharpness recently and Robertson has turned to Carter who he says is \u201cprobably the fastest (rugby player) in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
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While Carter will face a high-pressure debut, he has significant international experience after playing more than 100 games for the New Zealand rugby sevens team, including at last year’s Olympics.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still a major elevation for a player who recently was making his living as an electrician.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was playing National Provincial Championship and then going back to work as a sparky (electrician),\u201d Carter said. \u201cThe Sevens environment gave me a professional contract where I could just focus on rugby. All the little things I could focus on \u2014 nutrition, planning \u2014 it helped me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impact importance<\/p>\n
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The Springboks bench made an impact last week, helping to add some sharpness to a team which previously had lacked it on attack.<\/p>\n
New Zealand scored two tries in the first quarter and opened a 17-3 lead before South Africa finished strongly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know a lot of players didn\u2019t perform well and plenty of coaches, myself included, didn\u2019t coach well last week,\u201d Erasmus said. \u201cOne positive was how the game ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys who came on brought energy and fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robertson, by dropping Fletcher Newell to the bench beside Tamaiti Williams, has two strong props to shore up the All Blacks\u2019 scrum late in the match.<\/p>\n
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The selection of Ruben Love on the bench adds a player who could spark the All Blacks\u2019 backline late in the match.<\/p>\n
Home ground disadvantage?<\/p>\n
After securing their 51st consecutive win at Eden Park last weekend, the All Blacks head to the New Zealand capital, which has not always been their most fruitful home ground.<\/p>\n
The All Blacks most recent home loss to South Africa was at Wellington in 2018, when the Springboks won 36-34.<\/p>\n
Until recently, New Zealand had a better record in the professional era at Twickenham (London) and Ellis Park (Johannesburg) than at Wellington.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe South Africans have beaten us twice the last two times we\u2019ve played (in Wellington) so that\u2019s another record you\u2019ve got to be mindful of,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cOur preparation and focus have been on getting back to the capital and keeping our form.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to improve. We know that with these double headers, you\u2019ve got to improve week to week. We\u2019ve learned that recently.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP rugby: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/rugby<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 The second test between New Zealand and South Africa on Saturday may play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11931,85,46,11935,1630,11932,9875,11933,9517,105,11930,11934],"class_list":["post-11042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all-blacks","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-leroy-carter","tag-new-zealand","tag-rassie-erasmus","tag-rugby-championship","tag-scott-robertson","tag-south-africa","tag-sports","tag-springboks","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}