Fifteen line breaks. Eighteen turnovers lost. The All Blacks player ratings from Ellis Park have to hold both of those numbers at once, which is why almost nobody in the team Dave Rennie named for this fixture finishes above seven.
Ethan Blackadder takes the highest score of the night at 8.5. Noah Hotham takes the lowest at 4.5, and it will not be popular, because he also scored a try. Three men who were not on the field until the final quarter get sevens for eleven minutes of work.
Beaten 35-17 with 33 minutes left. Won 41-35. For context on how far below the standard this sat, look at how the Test side was scored at this ground on Saturday.
All Blacks player ratings: the front row was beaten for 74 of the 80
1. Siale Lauaki, 4.5/10. Seventy minutes on a night when, by Stuff’s count from the ground, New Zealand won a single scrum on their own feed while the Lions banked eight. He stayed out there long after a loosehead normally would, purely because his replacement was being kept in reserve for the weekend. Very little in the loose to set against it.
2. Samisoni Taukei’aho, 5/10. Forty-four Test caps, and the lineout was a mess. He bundled his own throw on 29 minutes and lost another one inside the Lions’ 22 two minutes later, killing the best attacking position of the half. Solid enough carrying. The set piece is what he is picked for.
3. Pasilio Tosi, 5.5/10. Went backwards with everyone else, then produced the single best forward carry of the first half, dashing clear and offloading to Beauden Barrett in the move that ended with a try being chalked off for a forward pass. Half a mark for that.
Locks: one turnover, and one pass that should never have been thrown
4. Sam Darry, 5/10. Forced a turnover on 27 minutes and won a decent amount of lineout ball. He also took a man out off the ball near halfway on 13 minutes for no reason at all, and threw a one-handed pass metres from his own line early in the second half that started the sequence ending in Francke Horn’s try. Two moments of thoughtlessness cost more than the good work earned.
5. Patrick Tuipulotu, 5.5/10, captain. Tapped a quick penalty on 23 minutes with the All Blacks in a strong position, got isolated by the Lions’ fetchers and handed the ball straight back. He was pulled at 49 minutes with the score at 35-17, which had nothing to do with his performance and everything to do with Josh Lord’s concussion and a Test match in Cape Town.
Back row: the best player on the field, and two who did not show up
6. Wallace Sititi, 5.5/10. His forward pass on 38 minutes is why Fehi Fineanganofo does not have a try, after Barrett had already done something absurd with his boot to create it. For a loose forward with his profile, a night of almost no visible influence.
7. Ethan Blackadder, 8.5/10. The best All Black at Ellis Park and it is not close. Two tries, both scored by arriving at pace on the edge rather than by being handed the ball on a plate. A turnover inside his own 22 when the game was still being lost. Joint-top carrier with 11 by the 53rd minute. The one blot is a knock-on in the fourth minute going for a turnover, and it led to the scrum from which Nico Steyn opened the scoring.
8. Semisi Ta’eiloa, 5/10. There is no way to dress this up. In a game with 228 combined carries and 41 points scored by his own team, the No 8 barely registered. Nothing disastrous, nothing to point at either.
Halves: a rusty comeback and the worst seven minutes of the tour
9. Noah Hotham, 4.5/10. A box kick that went dead on two minutes, gifting the Lions the field position that produced the first try. A lineout pass thrown into Siba Mahashe’s hands on seven minutes, which produced the second. Then a genuinely sharp finish off Emoni Narawa’s break on 11 to make some of it back. The recovery was real. So were the fourteen points.
10. Richie Mo’unga, 6/10. His first match back in the jersey since the 2023 World Cup final, and it looked exactly like a man playing his first match back. Two try-saving covering tackles, one on Quan Horn and one on Mahashe. A line break out of his own half on 73 minutes that nobody could support. Ten carries by the 53rd minute. Against that: a penalty kicked dead on 16, and two conversions missed from four attempts once he took the tee off Barrett. “It’s really special. It’s been a long time,” he said of the return. Ruben Love has not lost a Test with the 10 on his back this year, and this did not change that.
Midfield and back three: where the 41 points came from
11. Emoni Narawa, 8/10. The most dangerous runner in either team from the opening minutes. Broke two tackles to create Hotham’s try, made the break on 19 that should have produced another, scored twice, and tackled JC Pretorius into touch with six minutes left when the Lions were still ahead on the scoreboard in everyone’s head. His second try, cutting back inside two flying tacklers on the touchline, was the finish of the night. Failed to gather Barrett’s kick on 54 that would have been a walk-in for Hotham.
12. Timoci Tavatavanawai, 8/10. Bent the Lions’ defensive line almost every time he touched it. Eleven carries by the 53rd minute, joint-top with Blackadder, and the break from inside his own 22 on 52 minutes was the moment the All Blacks first looked like a side that believed it. Kept the ball alive in the move that put Blackadder over for the lead.
13. Rieko Ioane, 7.5/10. Two tries, one taken at pace off Barrett’s timing on 50 minutes and one an intercept handed to him by a loose Richard Kriel pass. Big metres all night after moving to the right wing. He also drifted a stride too far left at the fifth-minute scrum, which is precisely why Steyn had a hole to step into.
14. Fehi Fineanganofo, 7/10. Three carries that broke the Lions apart, including the one on 36 minutes that left the defence in pieces for Blackadder’s first. He had a try of his own taken off him by Sititi’s pass. The inside ball to Narawa on 19 was clever. Off at 55, which may say more about the weekend than about the night.
15. Beauden Barrett, 7/10. Saved a try in the third minute with a full-pace cover and a boot into the stands. Produced an offload out of the back of his hand for Narawa’s first, then dropped the ball onto his own foot and grubbered through in a move so good the TMO had to intervene twice to rule it out. Against that: one conversion from three, and a needless penalty for entering a ruck illegally.
The bench that actually won it
16. Bradley Slater, 7/10. On at 63, and part of the front row that stopped the rot. Threw straight, drove the maul that got the All Blacks to within five metres in the closing stages.
17. Xavier Numia, 7/10. Was not even in the squad that morning. Came in when Ofa Tu’ungafasi was withdrawn ill, then packed down for the 75th-minute scrum that won the penalty which ended the match.
18. Saula Ma’u, 6.5/10. The newest All Black, a 140kg Otago tighthead who had been playing NPC rugby ten days earlier. The Lions dominated his first scrum and won a penalty off it on 69 minutes. Six minutes later he was part of the set piece that drove them backwards. That is a fair first night.
19. Jamie Hannah, 6/10. Landed in Johannesburg days before kick-off and played 31 minutes of a Test-intensity game. Took lineout ball cleanly under pressure. Also knocked on under a high ball on 74 minutes to hand the Lions a scrum on halfway with one point in it.
20. Peter Lakai, 6/10. Twenty-five minutes of honest work. The only man in support of Mo’unga’s break on 73, and he could not do much with it.
21. Kyle Preston, 6/10. Tidy. His kick on 73 minutes pinned the Lions deep in their own half at the exact moment they needed territory to win the game.
22. Josh Jacomb, not rated. Ten minutes, no meaningful involvement recorded in any live coverage of the match. There is nothing here to score.
23. Anton Lienert-Brown, 6.5/10. On at 55 with the All Blacks 18 points down. Broke the defensive line on 64 and gave the midfield a calmness it had not had.
The best All Black at Ellis Park
Ethan Blackadder. Officially the player of the match was Siba Mahashe, and the Lions flanker deserved it. Among the tourists there is no argument. Blackadder scored two tries from open play, won a turnover in his own 22 when New Zealand were being pulled apart, and carried more than anyone in black. He has spent three seasons being described as an impact option and a fitness risk. On a night when senior players around him were throwing one-handed passes on their own line, he was the one who behaved like a Test forward.
The harsh one: Noah Hotham, 4.5
He scored a try. He also gave away fourteen points inside seven minutes, and that is the whole case.
The box kick on two minutes was the one that mattered more than the interception, because it was a decision rather than an execution error. New Zealand had the ball, had gone through several phases, and were building. He kicked it dead, gave the Lions a lineout and a drive at the 22, and the pressure never came off until Steyn was under the posts three minutes later. The intercept pass on seven was worse to look at and easier to forgive: it was quick hands under pressure, thrown flat, and Mahashe read it early.
A halfback’s job in a scratch side that has never played together is to slow the game down and take the risk out of it. He did the opposite for a quarter of an hour, and the All Blacks spent the next 63 minutes paying it back. The try on 11 minutes is why this is a 4.5 and not a 4.
Read next: the reason none of these scores will matter much by Saturday is sitting in Cape Town, where the Springboks are getting their captain back for the second Test.
The 4.5 next to Noah Hotham’s name is the score worth arguing with, and there is a real case against it. So make it. Kyle Preston was the other halfback in the 23 and got 25 minutes with the game already turning. Name the moment Hotham did something in the last hour that changes the number, and the reasoning above gets rewritten
