Head coach Dave Rennie says the buck stops him as New Zealand knuckle down on avoiding more punishment from the Springboks in Baltimore on Saturday.
Last week’s 29-24 loss at FNB Stadium handed South Africa a 2-1 series lead in the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry, the Boks powering to victory on the back of a first-half penalty try and a ferocious second-half maul finished off by Malcolm Marx.
Speaking in the build-up to the finale, Rennie didn’t shy away from where the Kiwis came up short in Joburg.
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“I mean, the buck stops with me in the end. I think that scrum [last week]; you have a look at that scrum, we were poor and got punished,” he told the media in an online conference. “It’s a pretty easy decision for the referee, to be honest.”
The maul was equally costly, Rennie explained, pointing to a defensive read that broke down entirely.
“The maul, we competed in the middle and we’re supposed to compete at the tail on that one. The reason is, given the front, we can defend the front. But we went up in the middle and then we had no one in front of that maul once it started, and so we never recovered.
“Considering where that started and where that finished, we should do better.”
The former Chiefs and Wallabies boss admitted part of that breakdown comes down to experience missing from his pack.
“There’s no Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock out there who can say, ‘Oh, they’re defending a little bit differently, let’s go to this or that’.
“That’s where we’re at, and we’ve got to develop those guys quickly. We’ve got no option. This set-piece has to be better and so we can’t hide from it.”
Rennie backed the All Blacks to apply the lessons learned from back-to-back defeats and bounce back at the M&T Bank Stadium.
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“I reckon we’ll do a better job of staying in front of their maul this week. And when we got that right [last week], I think the very first maul of the game, they went nowhere and had to play away from it, so that would be ideal.”
However, he noted discipline and territory as a wider fix required. “I can’t remember the numbers from the weekend but the week before we had 18 lineouts, they had nine. And that’s because we’re trying to kick out less, so we don’t have lineouts in our own 22.
“Same principle, scrums: don’t make errors, don’t kick it out, don’t give away soft penalties,” Rennie concluded.
Photo: Floris van Schouwenburg/Gallo Images
The post ‘There’s no Brodie to fix All Blacks set-piece’ appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
Head coach Dave Rennie says the buck stops him as New Zealand knuckle down on avoiding more punishment from the Springboks in Baltimore on Saturday.
The post ‘There’s no Brodie to fix All Blacks set-piece’ appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Read More
