Bok coaches have 'perfect' record on New Zealand soil

SPOTLIGHT: The Springboks will line-up for Round Two of the Rugby Championship against the All Blacks at the Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland on Saturday with the current coaching staff of Jacques Nienaber and Johan Erasmus having an unbeaten run on New Zealand soil.

The South Africans might have a slight advantage when the fastest and most lethal nation in the world meets the most powerful in what can only be described as the key fixture of the condensed 2023 Rugby Championship campaign.

New Zealand are winless in their last two Tests on home turf against South Africa, with their last meeting at home against the Springboks ending in a 16-all draw in 2019.

Although, they had won eight in a row prior to that two-game stretch.

Since Nienaber and Erasmus took over as Springbok coaches, the Boks have played two matches in New Zealand – in September 2018 and July 2019, both in Wellington, winning one and drawing the second one 16-all.

Erasmus took over as coach of the Springboks in March 2018 and six months later, on September 15, his side triumphed 36-34 over the Kiwis.

The 2018 encounter was the first time a South African team were on the winning side in New Zealand since 2009, when they beat the All Blacks 32-29 in Hamilton under Peter de Villiers.

South Africa has won 37 percent of their 103 previous Tests against New Zealand, the best win rate of any team – in fact, they are the only team to have won even one-third of their games against the All Blacks with Australia (26 percent) the second most successful team against New Zealand.

South Africa’s record in Auckland is not great.

Since their first Test against each other in Auckland back in 1921, South Africa have only won two out of the ten encounters with one draw in 1994.

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New Zealand has won their last three Tests on the bounce when playing at home, scoring an average of 44 points per game across that stretch and keeping their opposition scoreless in the opening halves of their last two games in that span.

South Africa has won their last three Tests on the bounce by an average margin of 29 points per game; the last time they won more successive games was a four-win streak from July to August 2021.

South Africa’s Kurt-Lee Arendse is on a seven-game try-scoring streak in Tests, the joint-longest of any player from a Tier 1 nation in the last decade with his  10 tries across that stretch including one in his last game against Argentina in September 2022.