Springboks All Blacks 3rd test Analysis Thread

As always, anyone can join in.

Sluggish start for both sides. ABs run the same type of play they did last week with Dmac running the dummy on Kriel to keep him locked. They get the space wide but Love's pass to Carter is poor, low and into touch.

Boks from the lineout maul has to play, Reinach delays 5 steps before sending it to DDA, who is easily spot tackled by Jordie as the ABs not bothered by the Wiese and Arendse decoy runs close to the maul.

1:48 Wiese with a low momentum carry is driven 5m back, leaving the Boks in some disarray and prompting the high ball from Sacha at the next phase. Way too deep, Dmac marks, kicks out. Kolbe throws in quickly to Sacha who is tackled by Quinn. A borderline but imo fair tackle ruled high, penalty, Bok lineout. Wiese gets at the back, drives forward into the 22 aided by Hooker. Quick ball, Nortje beats the first tackle and makes 5 more meters, which ends up just too far for his support as Lakai is over him for the steal.

06:10 The AB now manufacture their first clear space wide. From the scrum Jordie at first receiver will feed Quinn who will occupy both Bok centers.

The AB backs maintain their offensive alignment to the left, prompting the Boks to shift that way. But Roigard goes right with the forwards, floating the cutout across the face of the first 3 Bok defenders straight to Aumua outside Ox, who releases Lakai for a 20m gain.

Reinach does well to rip the ball clear from Lakai in the Marx tackle and hacks ahead. Jordan gathers, is given some space by the Bok defense and cuts past Reinach and Hooker. He chips ahead but Kolbe on the cover gets to it first. A kick angled to the wide open space on the right might have yielded more reward, but who knows.

And that's a mouthful for just the first 7 minutes of a brilliant test.

Your 1st immage looks like obstruction by AB 12 and DMac?... we've had a try disallowed for less obstruction in one of the previous matches.

08:10 more shades of last week as the ABs use Carter running off Love from phase ball to get the man over. Quinn gets fairly static ball, flings it to Love while Jesse is doing his usual rush onto him.

Carter though is coming around on Love's outside and the rush is beaten, Arendse is pinned and the space is there.

Ball goes to Jacobson edging, he beats Kriel's cover tackle into the 22, breaks Kolbe's jaw in an unfortunate contact as I showed in another thread (Kolbe actually brings him down) and we set up again.

Now to ABs slowly play right with a few short carries until Jordie throws the wide cutout to Ardie with Lakai outside.

Ardie steps Hooker to the inside, offloads out of the PSDT tackle and Sacha slaps the offload forward. In my opinion, under the current law for a deliberate slapdown this is penalty try territory as no one is getting to Lakai if that offload gets to him. Lucky escape for the Boks as the ABs but for the hand of Sacha essentially manufactured a try from the start of this whole sequence.

And lest we forget, in the leadup to all the above - Quinn getting rid of Eben in spectacular style in one of those classic unexpected rugby moments. Naptime for me, more tomorrow.

Congratulations guys on Boks superiority on Saturday. I was in the I C U in hospital here in Hamilton after open heart surgery to replace 2 valves. Boks far too dominant in scrums getting so many penalties I nearly ended up back in the theatre…..
ABs had some poor tackle misses particularly from Carter on DDA and Kriel which cost us 14 points. Still that didn’t tell the whole story as the Boks were so dominant in the 2nd half it was painful for me.
I’ll say it yet again, we need that scrum parity to have any chance in Baltimore!

Cheers guys.

Good work, Paks.

How does anybody watch a test like this and still find it in themselves to ever watch soccer?

I watched it again last night.

Gosh, what a cracker of a game.

NZ are gonna bring all the fire in America. They're desperate to level things up because 3-1 won't sit well with anybody down there.

But they have a bunch of injuries to key players now.

It's as we predicted at the start of this when we said that injuries over a series like this will hurt the ABs more than the Boks. Ardie, Quinn and Jacobson are all out.

Now think if the Boks had similar injuries. Cam would come in for Wiese, Moodie for Kriel and take your pick if Jacobson's equivalent went down. We've lost Kolbe, but that won't really hurt us too much because it'll be Hooker, Arendse, Willemse.

Still gutted for Clarke. Man I rate that guy big time but he just can't seem to get going and now he's also got a big injury.