{"id":543137,"date":"2026-07-25T06:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T06:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/543137\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T06:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T06:56:27","slug":"ex-all-black-gets-nostalgic-as-springboks-will-be-run-off-their-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/543137\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-All Black gets ‘nostalgic’ as Springboks will be ‘run off their feet’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-All Blacks hooker James Parsons believes that Dave Rennie and his set of players have brought the magic back to New Zealand<\/a> rugby following their impressive July campaign.<\/p>\n

They were in disarray at the start of the year following the sacking of head coach Scott Robertson, who received criticism for his more conservative approach to the game.<\/p>\n

Rennie<\/a> has since taken over and the 62-year-old has given his side more license to move the ball, which has paid dividends in the Nations Championship.<\/p>\n

Impressive Nations Championship<\/p>\n

They defeated France, Italy and Ireland over successive weekends, scoring at least five tries in every match, and now look forward to huge four Tests against the world champion Springboks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found myself sitting there with a little bit of nostalgia, it felt like when you were eight or nine years old and you\u2019re watching Cullen,\u201d Parsons said on the Aotearoa Rugby Pod.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching the way [Damian] McKenzie played, the way Ardie [Savea] played, Tupou Vaa\u2019i, Jordie [Barrett] \u2013 the whole squad to be fair \u2013 it felt this was a group of players that is inspiring the next generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still fondly look back to that \u201996 tour when the All Blacks<\/a> won [in South Africa]. This team\u2019s on to a climb and it\u2019s really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parsons was joined on the show by former Crusaders scrum-half Bryn Hall, who agreed with the ex-hooker and then made a bold prediction ahead of the Greatest Rivalry series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s bringing people back I believe. The talk around rugby now is you want to go and watch an All Black game because of the way they are playing,\u201d Hall said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the brand of rugby, I\u2019m enjoying it, and I\u2019m going to put it out there right now; I seriously think we\u2019re going to run them off their feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the way we\u2019re going to beat them. Their scrum, their set-piece, everything that comes with the Springboks \u2013 they are the best team in the world \u2013 but the way they are playing\u2026 I\u2019m pretty excited to go to South Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the Nations Championship, I was like, \u2018it\u2019s going to be a tough series for us\u2019, and it still will be, but I think we\u2019ve got enough there to run them off their feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sir Steve Hansen\u2019s \u2018think outside the square\u2019 All Blacks plan to negate huge Springboks strength and leave them \u2018frustrated\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Hall clarified he does not believe the All Blacks will thrash the Springboks but that, with the way they are playing under Rennie, the tourists will cause them problems with their up tempo rugby.<\/p>\n

All Blacks to play \u2018high octane rugby\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be a big margin\u2026 we\u2019re going to play a high octane level of rugby. We\u2019ve got a good balance, we did 24 kicks on the weekend which is very good in terms of what we want to see game management-wise, but we\u2019re going to run them,\u201d he added<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although there are evidently areas of improvement for the All Blacks, their try-scoring ability is not one of them, as they showed in their dominant victory over Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about the hot start with Razor and the crew, missing all those opportunities. Remember we were talking about, \u2018man, in South Africa, you can\u2019t miss those opportunities\u2019,\u201d Parsons said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the difference, which is the ability to take the points on offer. Apart from the [Luke] Jacobson yellow card, it was looking like it was going to be a big score.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat yellow card certainly brought Ireland back into the game and relieved a lot of that pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Rating every All Blacks player from the Nations Championship: Three big standouts in new era but star forward \u2018disappoints\u2019 as Dave Rennie sends message<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-All Blacks hooker James Parsons believes that Dave Rennie and his set of players have brought the magic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1463,1464,111,43,139,69,1466,213],"class_list":["post-543137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-south-africa","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}