Tony Johnson called 2009 on DSPN’s Monday review. Graham Henry ran that rethink as head coach. He has picked the All Blacks since May.
“In 2009, the All Blacks were beaten in all three Tests by the Springboks … Sound a little bit familiar?”
Tony Johnson asked it on DSPN on Monday, two days after South Africa closed out Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry 3-1 in Baltimore. Graham Henry was the head coach in 2009. He picks the All Blacks now.
Is this 2009 again, with the same man in the room, or the story New Zealand tells itself after every defeat to South Africa?
Three scorelines, and a lineout Kieran Read still remembers
Bloemfontein, 25 July 2009: 28-19. Durban a week later: 31-19, Morné Steyn scoring all 31 with eight penalties and the conversion of his own try. Hamilton, 12 September: 32-29, and the Tri Nations went to South Africa. Three defeats in one season to the same opponent.
Kieran Read, 127 Tests, an All Blacks captain and a World Cup winner in 2011 and 2015, was on the bench for the first two. He described them on The Good, The Bad & Rugby ANZ after the Cape Town Test this year, before the pattern had finished repeating.
“I sat on the bench in [South Africa] again in Bloemfontein and Durban… that was an experience watching that, watching their tactics… and then we lost in Hamilton as well and it was their box kicks and it was Victor Matfield, [Bakkies Botha] just getting up and owning our [lineout]… was basically the difference… those tests and that fuelled the way we played the game for the next few years. Obviously in two years time won the 2011 World Cup.”
Cape Town 33-26. Soweto 29-24. Baltimore 43-28. The ledger of the four 2026 Tests is on the series review, and it reads like a translation of Read’s paragraph.
Johnson’s three parallels, checked against this series
Johnson, Sky Sport’s lead commentator for more than twenty years, did not leave the comparison at the scoreline.
“Quite a few of the similar characteristics of that series. You know, the Springboks causing problems at the set piece. It was more the lineout back then with the likes of Victor Matfield. The kicking game was causing all sorts of issues for the All Blacks, and the All Blacks were making mistakes under pressure.”
Take them in order. The set piece in 2009 was Matfield’s lineout. In 2026 it was the scrum, and Read says the Springboks scrum is legal, which is the bad news for a side that spent August complaining about it.
The kicking game in 2009 was Steyn charging three points for every All Blacks mistake. In 2026 the tee scored 49 points for South Africa and 26 for New Zealand across four Tests. New Zealand attempted one penalty goal in the whole series, Ruben Love’s in Soweto on 53 minutes, and missed it.
New Zealand outscored South Africa on tries across the series and still lost it, which is the 2009 pattern with the numbers swapped around.
Mistakes under pressure. Johnson again: “For the second time in consecutive weeks, we had an absolutely needless penalty given away, returns an attacking, or just burns a really good attacking opportunity, and guys have just got to make better decisions in the heat of the moment.”
Tupou Vaa’i’s penalty on 67 in Baltimore, holding Cameron Hanekom off the ball inside the Springboks 22 at 29-21, is the one the coaches will replay.
Three for three.
What Graham Henry did with a whitewash
“There was a glorious silver lining in that though. Graham Henry admitted at the time they were forced to sit down and think about what they were doing. Did they have the right game, the right people, the right mindset? And the seeds from that was sown and they bore fruit at Eden Park two years later.”
Johnson worked on Sky’s documentary The Weight of a Nation, which followed the All Blacks from the 2007 quarter-final to the 2011 final. This is his memory of what Henry said in it.
“He said that the silver lining was it made us sit down and think about what we were doing. It made us think about what players we needed to do certain things, about our strategies, about our own roles as coaches. So they actually had to sit down and really unpack the whole thing.”
In 2010 New Zealand beat South Africa 32-12 at Eden Park, 31-17 in Wellington a week later and 29-22 at FNB Stadium in August.
RugbyPass’s Ben Smith wrote in July that the All Blacks went from a kick-heavy 2009 to a faster, higher-risk game built on the breakdown. Johnson’s version is shorter: “It was all about the attack and they had to make some changes to account for the defence.”
Then 23 October 2011. France 7, New Zealand 8, Eden Park. Two years, almost to the month, after Hamilton.
Henry is in the room, and he said the quiet part in April
On 12 May, at a press conference in Auckland, Dave Rennie named Graham Henry as an All Blacks selector alongside himself and senior assistant coach Neil Barnes.
“We are really excited to bring ‘Ted’ in as a selector. I’ve had a number of chats to him even prior to applying for the job, just to get ahead around the legacy and all the work he did around leadership, what he found and what he learnt during his time as All Black coach.”
A month before that, on DSPN with Martin Devlin, Graham Henry had already given his reading of the gap. “They are the best in the world by a considerable margin right now,” he said of the Springboks, and then aimed the harder line at his own country’s administrators: “That’s our problem in this country, we’re arrogant about our position in the rugby world. We need to change.”
He was careful to say the players were not the arrogant ones. The people who “just expect to win” were.
So the man Johnson wants back at the table, Graham Henry, wrote its first agenda item five months ago, in public, before he had a seat.
Read also: John Kirwan calls the three defeats learnings, and named the two locks he would settle on before Henry and Rennie pick a side for Eden Park.
Where the parallel breaks: six seasons against seven Tests
Johnson’s own line on what happens next is the correct one, and it is also the flaw in his comparison.
“You’re talking three great brains of rugby, obviously, Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen, Graham Henry. They will have to do that again now. They will sit down, and I have no doubt that they will, the coaching group, and they’ll go, okay, what worked, what didn’t work, and most importantly, what needs to be done better.”
Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen had worked together since 2004. The 2009 season was their sixth, and they had already lost a World Cup quarter-final as a group. When they sat down, the three men doing the sitting were the same three who would still be there two years later to act on it.
Rennie has coached seven Tests. He is the third All Blacks head coach in four years, after the coach who lost the 2023 final and Scott Robertson, whose tenure New Zealand Rugby ended on 15 January.
The last three-in-a-row against South Africa, the 2023 final and both 2024 Rugby Championship Tests, straddled a change of head coach. The room changed before anyone could sit down in it.
That is the part of 2009 New Zealand cannot copy by deciding to.
Johnson knows it, which is why he refused the word failure and put a date on the judgment instead. “It’s emphatic, but it doesn’t mean this has been a failure for the All Blacks. You might think so, but not me … Failure would be if they can’t become a better team for what they’ve just experienced.”
And: “The ultimate judgment as to how it’s going, can wait until the end of the year.”
The end of the year is two Bledisloe Cup Tests, Eden Park on 10 October and Sydney a week later, then Scotland, Wales and England in the Nations Championship pool in November.
Rennie said the Baltimore numbers were even. The Baltimore ratings did not agree, and neither did the last quarter.
Read next: Dan Biggar says New Zealand played the better rugby, and the Springboks record since 2019 explains why they won anyway. The 2009 side had a great year. This one has had seven.
Your turn: 2009 again, or the story New Zealand tells itself?
Two readings of the same three defeats. Either the pattern Johnson names is real, the set piece, the tee and the errors, and a rethink with Graham Henry in the room does what it did in 2009 and 2010.
Or the precondition is missing. The 2009 fix took three coaches with six years behind them and two in front. This group has seven Tests. Settle it below.
Frequently asked
What happened to the All Blacks in 2009?
South Africa beat them three times in the Tri Nations: 28-19 in Bloemfontein, 31-19 in Durban, where Morné Steyn scored all 31 points, and 32-29 in Hamilton. New Zealand reversed all three results in 2010 and won the 2011 World Cup at Eden Park.
What is Graham Henry’s role with the All Blacks now?
Graham Henry is a selector. Dave Rennie named him on 12 May 2026 alongside himself and senior assistant coach Neil Barnes. He is not part of the coaching staff.
What did Tony Johnson say about the Springboks series?
On DSPN’s Monday review he compared the 3-1 defeat to 2009, said it was not a failure, and said the judgment on Rennie’s All Blacks can wait until the end of the year.
