All Black legends provide Razor with a winning recipe for Bok showdowns
SPOTLIGHT: If the All Blacks are going to beat the Boks in this year’s Rugby Championship, they will need to run them ragged.
That is the view of All Black legend John Kirwan.
New Zealand will head to South Africa at the end of August to face the Springboks at Ellis Park (August 31) before they meet again a week later in Cape Town (September 7) in Round Four.
The All Blacks are laying new foundations under head coach Scott Robertson as they aim to dominate the game again.
Robertson kicked off his tenure with a series win over England before his team thumped Fiji in San Diego last weekend.
As it is still early days, there are still some questions about the direction the All Blacks are heading.
The story continues below…
“We haven’t won the World Cup since 2015,” Kirwan said on The Breakdown show.
“We need to find a new DNA, an extra DNA and a different type of player if we are going to lead the world again.
“Have we seen what our DNA is yet?”
The story continues below…
Kirwan then went on to add that the All Blacks will need to keep the Springboks guessing with ball in hand.
“I think we are starting to see a little bit of it. If you go back to the first 10 minutes against England in the second Test at Eden Park, they actually threw it around,” Kirwan explained.
“They tried to give it some air and tried to run the opposition off their feet.
“How are we going to beat South Africa?
“We are not going to beat them at their own game, so we’ve got to run them around.”
Former All Black scrumhalf Justin Marshall used the match between the Boks and All Blacks two years ago in Johannesburg as an example of that winning recipe.
On that day, the All Blacks recorded a 35-23 win after going down 10-26 a week earlier in Nelspruit.
“We did that successfully a couple of years ago at Ellis Park,” said Marshall.
“We literally ran them off the park.
“They had to replace their entire front row before half-time.
“They couldn’t handle the pace.”
