Dave Rennie’s team had just scored five tries to one, won by 17 points at Ellis Park and gone 1-0 up in a series nobody expected them to lead. The first thing he said into the microphone was that there was nothing in the game.
“I know the score might sound convincing,” the New Zealand head coach said, “but it was an absolute arm wrestle at 19-16.”
Winning coaches do not usually open by disowning the scoreboard. Over the next 13 minutes Rennie did it again and again, and what emerged was a description of the match almost identical to the one Rassie Erasmus gave from the losing dressing room half an hour later.
“South Africa are the best in the world”
That is a direct quote, from the man who had just beaten them.
Erasmus, for his part, spent his press conference describing New Zealand as the best side in the world and joking about the pleasure of arriving in Cape Town as underdogs. Two coaches, one result, and each of them pointing across the corridor.
Rennie’s version came with a number attached, and it is the number that explains the entire evening.
“They score five and a half points every entry,” he said, “and tonight I think was 0.9, whereas we were 3.7. And I reckon that’s a big, big stat — we were able to convert when we got down there and they weren’t tonight.”
The Springboks are, on Rennie’s own count, the most ruthless side in world rugby inside the opposition 22. At Ellis Park they got in eleven times and produced 0.9 points a visit. That is not a team being outplayed. That is a team failing at one specific thing, repeatedly, for 80 minutes.
READ ALSO: How the All Blacks lost the first hour at Ellis Park and won the Test anyway
He was not pretending his side were good
Asked about his own team’s discipline, Rennie did not reach for anything diplomatic. New Zealand were beaten on the penalty count and he knew exactly why.
“We gave away some — can’t say what we call those sorts of penalties — but not smart penalties,” he said. “Things like hitting them early when they’re trying to set the maul. So that was frustrating. We kept giving them into the 22.”
He described his side as under pressure for long stretches, singled out the 10 minutes before half-time as the passage that saved the match, and admitted New Zealand handed the ball back twice in that spell to give South Africa another go.
On the defensive effort, the compliment was aimed at the opposition as much as his own players. “You’re doing well to keep South Africa to one try,” he said.
The scrum, and the moment all three of us agree on
Rennie was asked to name the point where the balance shifted, and he did not hesitate.
“I thought it was a scrum in the — was it 55th minute?” he said. “We’ll always debate scrums and I reckon every team does. When you get penalised, you question whether they’re walking around. They got penalised for walking around eventually, and that was probably a key moment in the game.”
Erasmus named the same scrum, putting it at 58 minutes with his side trailing 19-16. The winning coach and the losing coach, asked separately, chose the identical passage of play out of 80 minutes.
Rennie’s explanation of why it turned is worth noting: he credits the bench. “We got great impact off the bench,” he said, and described the scrum as solid for the last half-hour after it had been anything but for the first 50.
READ MORE: Asafo Aumua came on at 54 and the All Blacks scrum stopped collapsing — how one substitution decided Ellis Park
The prop who spent Friday in bed
The detail that came out almost in passing: Ethan de Groot played the first half of a Test against the best scrum in the world while ill.
“Groota went home early from the captain’s run yesterday and spent a large time in bed,” Rennie said. “But he’s tough, and he fronted up and gave us plenty tonight.”
The coaching staff had gone into the match weighing up whether George Bower would need a full 40 minutes. Rennie, who prefaced it by saying he is reluctant to single out individuals, then singled him out anyway.
“It’s the reason we had George on the bench tonight — we felt his experience would be really important,” he said. “He’s such a good man, he’s such a massive part of our culture, and for him to come on and have that sort of impact on the game is a real testament to him.”
Two players are now unavailable for Tuesday’s match against the Lions after the head clash that ended de Groot’s and Josh Lord’s evenings, and Rennie said both are doubtful for Cape Town pending head-injury protocols.
“We’re still in our infancy”
Less than two months into the job, a first win at Ellis Park, a series lead over the world champions — and Rennie refused the moment entirely.
“It’s not about me,” he said when asked what it meant for his career. “I’m really [pleased] for the players. We’ve got a fantastic group of staff who’ve worked really hard.”
Then: “We’re still in our infancy. We’re still getting our head around exactly how we want to play, and growing, and we’ve got some good young men coming through.”
He also admitted he had been “very nervous” watching the review of the head contact that could have produced a third card, and conceded he would be biased about the outcome. “They made the call, and it worked in our favour.”
None of this is false modesty. It is a coach who watched his pack get taken apart for an hour, watched his side hand the Springboks eleven visits to the 22, and understands precisely how narrow the margin was between a 17-point win and a defeat.
“We’re wary of the response we’ll get next week,” he said, roughly 40 seconds into the whole thing.
The second Test is at DHL Stadium in Cape Town on Saturday 29 August.
READ ALSO: Erasmus refuses the ‘catastrophe’ label — and names the scrum that lost Ellis Park
