Although the Springboks are the world’s best team at the moment, Wayne Pivac believes it’s not impossible for the All Blacks to beat them in their Greatest Rivalry series.

The Springboks will welcome the All Blacks to South Africa later this year where the New Zealanders will go head-to-head with the current world champions in three Test matches.

The All Blacks will also face all four of South Africa’s United Rugby Championship franchises – the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls and Lions – respectively, with a fourth Test set to take place at an overseas venue which must still be announced.

Rugby in New Zealand was thrown into turmoil last week when Scott Robertson was relieved of his duties as All Blacks head coach.

New Zealand’s upcoming tour to South Africa will be arguably the toughest schedule which any international team has undertaken to that country which means whoever replaces Robertson as All Blacks head coach will have a massive task on his hands.

New Zealander Pivac was Wales’ head coach from 2020 to 2022 but also coached Fiji from 2004 to 2007 and has nearly 30 years’ experience of coaching at club and provincial levels in New Zealand, Wales and Japan.

In 2022, he was in charge of Wales when they faced the Springboks in a three-Test series in South Africa.

Although the hosts clinched a 2-1 series victory, Wales were very competitive and made history by winning their first-ever Test against the Boks in South Africa.

Pivac used his experiences from that tour to come to the conclusion that the All Blacks could surprise the world champions despite being overwhelming underdogs.

The 63-year-old said despite being inconsistent, the All Blacks showed last year that the Boks are beatable and believes if the visitors are well prepared, they should be victorious.

‘They’re not unbeatable, are they?’

“First and foremost, they’re not unbeatable, are they? Because the All Blacks played very well at Eden Park (in 2025),” he told the DSPN podcast with Martin Devlin.

“And a week later, though, the unfortunate thing was there was a blowout (in Wellington). So, the consistency that I talked about earlier was probably the main concern.

“Touring South Africa, as New Zealand rugby players know, is not an easy thing to do. A lot of planning goes into it. Look, when we (Wales) had our tour there, we played three Test matches three weeks in a row.

“And for us, as a squad of Wales, the third week was a week too far. We were very competitive on the first Test, 29-all, and they kicked the penalty in the 81st minute to win 32-29.

“We were lucky enough to win the second Test, and that was the first time Wales have ever beaten South Africa in South Africa, 13-12 in a very tight game.

“And in the third Test, it was just a week too far for our squad. We were beaten up.”

All Blacks: Wayne Pivac reveals the ‘red flags’ he saw ahead of Scott Robertson’s axing

A key to the Springboks’ current domination of the global game is the superior physicality of their forwards but Pivac revealed that his Wales side were well prepared for their hosts’ onslaught in the tight exchanges.

“They’re physically big men. The way they play the game, very direct. And they’ve got a lot of power and pace,” he said.

“So, they’re a handful for any team. But for us, the third Test, I think we lost 30-16. But a 2-1 series (defeat).

“The preparation we went in with that one was different from any other Test matches we’d played. We had more time with the players, mainly because the Welsh clubs had been knocked out earlier of Europe in the club competition.

“But we had an extra week with the players to really hone in on the game-plan and how we wanted to play the game.

‘We didn’t want to play to their strengths’

“So with South Africa, what we did was just look at a couple of things. We didn’t want to play to their strengths, so we didn’t want to give them lineouts.

“Obviously, lineouts and scrums, the set-piece is where they get a lot of, often, superiority in penalties.

“Lineout drives and scrums. So, it was keeping the ball on the field. So, we had a kicking strategy to go with that.

“It meant that we had to be very fit and we had to have an organised defensive chase line and a counter-attack plan to go with that, which we had in place.”

Pivac revealed other key areas which helped Wales to match the Boks in that series and highlighted how crucial a “squad effort” will be to get the better of Rassie Erasmus’ troops.

“We had to do a lot of work on the referees in terms of sending messages and pictures to them of what we thought South Africa were doing illegally at scrum time,” he said.

“A lot of that was bluff, but we certainly spent a lot of time sending footage through with our scrum coach to World Rugby.

“As it turned out, in that series of scrums, we were pretty even in terms of penalties. So, a lot of homework went in there. Then a big thing was just discipline, because if you give away penalties, they go into the corners, they go into lineouts, they get the drive going, they get into your 22, they’re pretty hard to stop, as every team in the world has found out in recent years.

“We worked really hard on that and we got up there. We were really pleased with the performance of the first two Tests, and as I say, the third Test was just one too many for us. So, to go there for a four-Test series, it’s not going to be easy.

“It’s going to be a squad effort, definitely, because you’re going to pick up bumps. So that’s just what we did, and we were the first ever (Wales) team to have success in South Africa, so it seemed to work for us.”

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