Steve Hansen reckons the Springboks earned the favour of the officials over the course of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series that left the All Blacks with plenty to work on.
The World Cup-winning Kiwi coach shared his thoughts on the latest episode of the Rugby Unity podcast, after Rassie Erasmus’ men beat New Zealand 43-28 in Baltimore on Saturday to secure a 3-1 series win.
He touched on the concept and value of the eight-match tour, the Kiwis winning five successive games that included the first Test before the Boks bounced back to claim bragging rights.
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“You see the two top teams in the world – teams that have got great rivalries – play each other once and then it’s forgotten,” Hansen said.
“But when you have a tour like they’ve had, you get to see them improve …. It becomes a battle in its own right.
“When you break it down, South Africa were just too good in the end. In probably every Test other than the first one, there were just moments – whether it was three or four moments in the Test – that swung it their way.
“They got a couple of rubs of the green, maybe in the last one with some of the refereeing decisions,” the former All Blacks boss added.
“But when you’re going forward and playing well, you normally get those rubs of the green, so you’ve just got to take it on the chin.”
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Hansen highlighted the set-piece, high ball and breakdown as key focus areas for Dave Rennie and co going forward.
“There are probably three areas I think we need to challenge ourselves on,” he said.
“South Africa are very good at getting over the ball.
“I thought our scrum on our ball was OK, but on their ball we didn’t challenge them enough. There were a lot of penalties in that area that allowed them to get into driving maul situations where they eventually scored tries.
“We haven’t mastered the high ball as well as they have. We moved the lineout around a little bit, made their big fellas have to move and chase us. When we did that, we got clean ball, but we were still too slow off the ground when going into a tempo race with them.
“Everything that’s there that we need to work on is very fixable, and very quickly.”
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Photo: Michael Franken/Michael Franken Photography
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