Rassie Erasmus would not call South Africa the better team in Baltimore. In the mixed zone, where players stop for reporters, the All Blacks fly-half who lost the 2023 World Cup final to them was asked whether they had got better since, and did not hesitate.
“Yeah, definitely. They’re a complete team.”
Richie Mo’unga had been an All Black again for about two hours when he said it. His 57th cap, his first Test in 1,050 days, and a 43-28 defeat that handed South Africa the inaugural Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series 3-1. The last time he had played the Springboks was the final in Paris, lost 12-11. Brenden Nel, 30 years on the Springboks beat, filmed it for his YouTube channel.
Rassie Erasmus says the margin is very small. The man who lost the final to them says they are a complete team now and were not then. Which one is right? Say so in the comments, then read what he said about his own team’s fix. It had nothing to do with the ball.
“A game of inches” is where he started
The first question was the ordinary one: his assessment of the game.
“It’s just a game of inches really. It just came down to a few key moments. We weren’t really as accurate as you wanted to be, and they’re just such a great team at applying pressure and taking the opportunities that we didn’t take ours.”
The inches are easy to find. It was 29-21 with 16 minutes to play after Ethan Blackadder scored on 64 and Damian McKenzie converted from the touchline. Then Kurt-Lee Arendse picked up a loose ball inside his own half on 72 and ran the length of the field, and Cameron Hanekom scored on 78 off a Will Jordan turnover. Fourteen points in six minutes, both from New Zealand ball.
The opportunities New Zealand did not take were slower. Jordan’s try on 38 took 32 phases. Mo’unga’s own clearance on 27, after Tupou Vaa’i had stolen the ball, did not find touch, and South Africa came straight back at him.
Read also: the All Blacks ratings gave him the lowest mark in black, for a fly-half the match happened around.
Three years, and “a bit of a blur”
Asked how he had gone personally, he did not rate himself. He said what it felt like.
“To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur. We have to watch that one back. But just assessing how I’m feeling, it’s just, man, so special to be back out there in the Test arena after three years. It’s exactly what I thought it’d be like, and the feeling of representing and putting on the jersey again, it’s just so special. I felt like I belonged out there, and the last three years building to that moment, it’s just really worth it, coming back home and giving myself that opportunity.”
Those years were spent at Toshiba Brave Lupus Tokyo, where he won two Japan Rugby League One titles.
The 18-month deal he signed to come home named October as the month he would become eligible for the All Blacks again. Then Billy Proctor fractured a shoulder blade in the tour opener against the Stormers in Cape Town and the timetable moved. He played the Lions at Ellis Park in a tour match and said there was no better feeling than being in the arena.
Belonging and running the game are different things. Cam Roigard and the forwards ran the 32-phase try. Mo’unga’s contribution was the move that put Codie Taylor over on 8 and the kick to the corner on 62 that set up Blackadder. He was on the field for the match rather than at the centre of it.
Richie Mo’unga missed the three years in between. His answer is the cleanest in the building.
Then the question that gave the video its title. Had the Springboks got better since the final?
“Yeah, definitely. They’re a complete team. Able to take you on up front and able to be really clinical and take you on in threes, but also they’ve got players that can play, man. They’ve got guys with fast feet on their back. So it presents us with really good opportunities. We know we’ve got to be better, and that’s been the story of the last four Tests. But if we can really take those learnings, it’ll be really exciting for the future of this team.”
Erasmus put the margin between the sides at “very small” and would not call his team the better one. Dave Rennie said the numbers were even. Both men had watched four Tests. Mo’unga had played two, the final and this one, and his answer was about the distance between them.
The distance is real. South Africa won the 2023 final without scoring a try. Handré Pollard kicked four penalties and New Zealand played 53 minutes with 14 men after Sam Cane’s red card. The whole case for the Springboks that night was pressure, the bench and the scrum. “Able to take you on up front” covers that side, and Malcolm Marx’s maul try on 49 in Baltimore was the same team doing the same thing.
“Guys with fast feet on their back” is the new part. Arendse’s try from inside his own half and Hanekom’s off a turnover were not pressure tries. They were a side scoring from broken field, on New Zealand possession, at the point of the match where the 2023 Springboks would have kicked to the corner and squeezed. Six tries in Baltimore. None in Paris.
“Literally the difference between winning and losing”
The next questioner put the series to him as a habit: South Africa being patient, building pressure, stacking moments one on top of the other, in all four Tests but especially the last three. Was that the difference?
“Exactly how you’ve explained it is literally the difference between winning and losing. If you’re able to build momentum and build pressure and stack those moments, as you say, we’ve seen when it happens we get rewards. Bit of [a] soft penalty, or don’t get the bounce we want.”
Soft penalty, bounce. Two things a fly-half cannot control, offered as the reasons his side lost. Then he was asked what it would take for the All Blacks to learn the same thing, and gave the answer that matters.
“I think there’ll be real good conversation around how can we build pressure, and I think we’ve seen what we can do with the ball, but it might be what can we do without the ball. What’s our defence look like, and really suffocating them down in their own half. That’s from just sort of my first impressions of how the game went. But it just comes down to some of those small moments I think we can really be better at.”
A fly-half, two hours after his comeback Test, naming the fix as the part of the game he does not touch. “We’ve seen what we can do with the ball” is not modesty. New Zealand outscored South Africa across the first three Tests and still flew to Baltimore 2-1 down. The attack was never the problem. Where the All Blacks played, and how long South Africa were allowed to play in the New Zealand half, was.
“Suffocating them down in their own half” also describes what happened to him on 27, and Rennie said in his own press conference that the high ball had put his side “under a little bit more heat again”. Steve Hansen and Ewen McKenzie’s list of what New Zealand were missing in Soweto was about kicking too: no penalty goals in three Tests, and a gap on the tee of 36 points to 18. Mo’unga’s version is the other kind of kicking, the kind that decides where the game is played.
If his first impression becomes the coaching conversation, watch the All Blacks’ exits at Eden Park in October: where the clearing kicks land, and how many phases Australia get inside the New Zealand half before someone kicks the ball away.
What Japan taught him, and what he told Beauden Barrett before kick-off
Asked what three years in Japan had changed in his game, he gave an answer about the Test arena rather than about Japan.
“It’s taught me one thing, and that’s the fact that there’s nothing like playing in the Test arena and representing your country. The feeling you have of running out and then singing the anthem and performing the haka, there’s nothing like that itself. The other thing is what international footy demands of yourself, and demands the best, and the pressure that you’re under. There’s nothing like it.”
A man who walked away from Test rugby at 29, explaining what he found out by leaving. The follow-up was about Beauden Barrett, and whether playing alongside him again felt like old times.
“Yeah, it does. I said to them before, I said it’s such a pleasure to be out there with you. Bringing back some good memories. But nothing’s changing the fact that we want the best for this team. Fast forward three years, our roles might look a little different to what it did three years ago, but our motives are still the same, and wanting the best for this team.”
The old times are specific. Every one of New Zealand’s 11 points in the 2023 final came from those two men: Barrett’s try on 58, Mo’unga’s two penalties. In Baltimore, Mo’unga started at 10 with McKenzie behind him at fullback. Barrett came off the bench for the last ten minutes and scored the final try of the series on 80. For those ten minutes the 2023 pairing was back on the same field, and the score was already gone.
“Our roles might look a little different” is the admission. In Paris they were the two starting playmakers. In Baltimore one was a bench finisher and the other held a 10 jersey Rennie had decided on before Soweto, win or lose. Ruben Love had started the first six Tests of the year. Rennie named four playmakers for two jerseys on Saturday night: “Richie and Ruben, Damian and Bod.” Mo’unga is one name in four.
What he wanted the first-timers to take home
The last question was about the crowd of 68,173, the largest for a rugby union match in North America, and the thousands in it watching the rivalry for the first time.
“Maybe just be inspired by the game of rugby. It’s a lot different to the NFL, American football, but they would have experienced some awesome fans out there, and hopefully an awesome brand of rugby that sort of makes them want to support footy in the future.”
Most of the awesome fans were wearing green. Codie Taylor said he would have liked a few more black jerseys. Mo’unga, three years out of the arena and one Test back in it, did not seem to mind who was singing.
Read next: Rassie Erasmus would not call the Springboks the better team. Read his answer next to Mo’unga’s and decide which one Baltimore proved. Then Siya Kolisi sang to them, and the Springboks player ratings from Baltimore show where the damage came from.
Frequently asked
What did Richie Mo’unga say about the Springboks after the Baltimore Test?
Asked whether South Africa had improved since the 2023 World Cup final, he said “yeah, definitely” and called them a complete team with “guys with fast feet on their back”.
When did Richie Mo’unga last play a Test before Baltimore?
The 2023 World Cup final at the Stade de France on 28 October 2023, which South Africa won 12-11. Baltimore on 12 September 2026 was his 57th cap and his first Test in 1,050 days, after three seasons with Toshiba Brave Lupus in Japan.
What did Mo’unga say the All Blacks need to fix?
His first impression was that the fix is without the ball: how the defence looks and how well New Zealand can suffocate opponents in their own half. He said the All Blacks have already shown what they can do with the ball.
Your turn: is Richie Mo’unga right that the Springboks are a better team than in 2023?
Two readings of the same night. Erasmus says the margin between the sides is very small and would not call his team the better one. Mo’unga, whose last two Tests against them were the final and Baltimore with nothing in between, says they are a complete team now and were not then. One of those views is a coach protecting an edge. The other is a fly-half who just felt it. Which one did the 43-28 prove? Settle it below.
