{"id":597857,"date":"2026-09-12T06:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T06:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/597857\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T06:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T06:38:09","slug":"justin-marshall-all-blacks-would-be-kidding-themselves-if-they-didnt-acknowledge-springboks-inevitability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/597857\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Marshall: All Blacks would be ‘kidding themselves’ if they didn’t acknowledge Springboks ‘inevitability’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Marshall insists that the All Blacks have to concede that the Springboks<\/a> have the dominant scrum despite complaints over its legality.<\/p>\n

Instead, the former scrum-half states that Dave Rennie\u2019s men have to counteract it in other ways and make it a less important factor in the match.<\/p>\n

Rennie<\/a> has accused South Africa of \u201cwalking around\u201d in the scrum, something which drew a stinging response from Boks<\/a> boss Rassie Erasmus.<\/a><\/p>\n

World Rugby on Boks\u2019 side<\/p>\n

The New Zealand head coach also revealed that World Rugby have disagreed with the All Blacks\u2019<\/a> assessment of the set-piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things that\u2019s inevitable really, at the end of the day if we by our own admission didn\u2019t look at it over the three Test matches so far and didn\u2019t say they had the superior scrum, we would be kidding ourselves,\u201d Marshall<\/a> told Sport Nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve got to do is find a way around them not having the ability to have as many scrums as they would like and assert their dominance on us.<\/p>\n

\u201cEqually, try and keep them out of the zones that are really dangerous and that\u2019s inside the 22. They\u2019re the best team in the world at accumulating points in that zone and I think on average, certainly before this Test series, every entry into the 22, they\u2019re accumulating 5.2 points, which is an incredible statistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you go into the 22, you\u2019re coming away with 5.2 points which is pretty damn good. We know we\u2019ve got to try and restrict their set-piece, try and negate the amount of scrums in the Test.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justin Marshall: Rassie Erasmus to influence Dave Rennie \u2018quite a lot\u2019 as Springboks look to make another \u2018statement\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

The Springboks only have five put-ins on their own ball in the third Test, but each one resulted in the All Blacks infringing.<\/p>\n

They conceded four penalties and a penalty try as it played a key role in South Africa claiming a 29-24 triumph in Soweto to go 2-1 up in the four-Test series.<\/p>\n

Rennie\u2019s side therefore have to be squeaky clean when it comes to their error rate or else they may be in for even more pain against the Boks in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

All Blacks\u2019 attacking potency<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the first Test at Ellis Park, the first scrum wasn\u2019t until the 16th minute, which is advantageous to the All Blacks,\u201d Marshall added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t use up any energy in the scrum so the way that the game played out, there wasn\u2019t a huge amount of scrums and that hasn\u2019t happened over the last two Tests.<\/p>\n

\u201cCut down the error rate so they\u2019re not kicking for touch or penalties, they\u2019re not kicking for touch and dominating lineouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know where we can get them \u2013 13 tries in three Test matches. We can get outside of this blitz defence now, we\u2019ve just got to stay away from where they want to take us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to take us into the hurt locker, set-piece and physicality-wise. We just want to avoid that at all cost, and when we do, we look like we can hurt them big time.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Sir Steve Hansen: Springboks have exposed two All Blacks\u2019 weaknesses that Dave Rennie has to fix before the World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Marshall insists that the All Blacks have to concede that the Springboks have the dominant scrum despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1463,1464,111,43,139,69,6327],"class_list":["post-597857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597857","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=597857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}