Understanding How the All Blacks and Boks Are Pulling Away From the Rest | Lekker Rugby Pod

This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby. Another Lekker Rugby Pod Sunday special edition. We thought it was a good thing to maybe have a look at the state of the nations after the first round of the Nations Champions. The inaugural one, the one that's not so well thought out, but at least, you know, we can see the Spearbox and Allbacks playing a bit. And Harry, what was interesting to me, you've now started developing, let's call it a Lekker Rugby Pod algorithm, an exclusive, something that you can at a glance look at and see what what's happening you know how the teams are playing what where they're diverging whether it's similar and everything else so yeah let's hear what you have to say about that absolutely from the depths of my fertile brain um i'm always brimming something in the two times i ever met russi erasmus one was in australia and it was just in passing but one was in cape town and he literally said he liked what i did he was referring to drawings like this one of Ruben Fonnier.

I'll just make him a little cameo here because he grabbed everything in the lineup. When you read Rossi's book, he talks about his dad being a musician and cooling his fiery brain by singing to him and rubbing his legs. And the ideas in that household, it was a lot about creation. And you see right now the 50-year-old Rossi, how he is not content to just to put forward team lineups and you know heights and weights he's really digging into the chias the art the creation and it's drawing upon very many communities and i was thinking about how new zealand kind of once upon a time was maybe more like that you know and now they're more structured they're more just the rugby dave reny just the rugby please you know suit tie russi's not a suit and tie coach he's not even maybe he forgets to put his shirt on sometimes so you know it's it's a whole bohemian vibe there um and so to befit that and because the nation's championship sorely lacks um some sort of flavor sometimes it is one of the most weirdly packaged uh comps but what i like about it is you know you know the harry index thrives on uh mythical matchups and hypothetical matchups well here you're giving real matchups you get to see that you know uh wales is japan and italy is fiji and and you know england scotland and ireland are squabbling to see who you you know, are they Australia or are they more like the big boys? And then astride the, you know, the top, the Colossus is the box and the All Blacks with the French just trying to hang on, you know?

Can they find the magic? Can they ever really get the big one? So because of all that and because it's sort of happening right in front of our eyes, I started thinking about the different ways the big guys play. Just the top four, really. Just, I mean, in Ireland, there's a case to be made that Ireland has even slipped out of the top four, but probably what keeps them in there is their 2-2 record against the box since the World Cup or including the World Cup.

So they had that one matchup that they do, but they're kind of slipping back. But just take the top four and I say, what do they do when they have the ball? So you have the ball on attack. Attack set ball that you really have, it's like 12 minutes in a game. So it is discreet.

It's concrete. You can encapsulate it. It's not as good as a cricket over, which recurs so many times that you can really stat. Or in basketball, you have a shot clock, you know, so you have to score within this amount of time. And I think rugby league has, you know, sets as well because you have to do this many carries and then you have to score or kick.

But rugby has the ability to say within the 12 minutes or if you're the All Blacks, maybe it's 14 minutes. And if you're the French or the box, maybe 11, 10 minutes. What can you do with it? What do you do with it? And maybe more importantly, what do you try to do with it?

Do you try to phase upon phase, 60 meters out, score, thinking that's what's going to happen? You know, hardly ever happens. So that means you're going to give the ball up in some way or you're going to win a penalty in some way. You're going to kick, you're going to spill, you know, something will happen. Or do you try to kick earlier in the cycle and the kick is part of the attack?

I'm finding kick space, chip space, aerial space, expanding the field upward, making it look more like a video game where you have, you know, sort of a whole different level of attack and area of attack. Air force instead of just people slogging across trenches in Belgium. So as that's happened, the French, by virtue of Bordeaux, but also Toulouse, and the box by virtue of their virtuoso coaches and the emergence of so many talented footballers, Marnie, Sasha, Ahmed, to replace the sort of, you know, Skopanyakh. It's not a Skopanyakh. It's not a hoist a Gary Owen and then run and try to moor someone.

It's specifically designed around scraps, and it's designed around the diagonals, and it's designed around unpredictability. So in a strange way, the phase ball of New Zealand is almost the most predictable. You saw Ireland versus New Zealand for the first 20 minutes. It was just same, same, same, same, same, same, same. and then someone did something different, which is the All Blacks started picking and going around the corner without the ruck.

Suddenly they scored, right? So it was just, you know, and then the French and the box started trying everything unpredictable, scatter, shotguns, scraps, meat off the table, and not saying this is the only way to score. There's lots of ways to score. So I started thinking about that. And I think, you know, just in discussions, we have a lot of discussions offline.

I'm trying to depict things. How do I show it? I came up with CPR. And CPR refers to three principal activities in rugby that you have a lot of control over. You have a lot of control over how much you carry, C, how much you pass, P, and how much you form a ruck, R.

And before you jump and say, well, of course, when you carry, there'll be a ruck. No, no, no. The total rucks built by whales in the box in one game together is less than the All Blacks build by themselves in one game. There's a decision whether you congregate around that tackle point and form a ruck and then go to Cameron Royguard, classic nine, and try to do classic backline moves, terminating in a classic wing try. This is all ducks.

That's not what the Bucks are going for. In their perfect world, Rossi wouldn't see any rucks. There'd be no ruck rugby. They're getting at the point now where it's almost bizarre how few rucks they're building. always less than 100 we'll just say that sometimes closer to 50 than to 100 rucks by box look over at ireland who's trying to be the all blacks but not getting there 102 rocks 110 rocks 111 rocks uh you look at the french 80 81 trying to be like the box it's the box though that will we dare to only have 55, 60 rucks.

And so that CPR score for South Africa is always going to be very low per game. When you compilate all the carries made, don't worry about the outcomes, just carries you chose to do. Passes because that brings someone along with me. That means someone has to be running next to me on the carry, not just watching me. And the ruck means two guys got to be with me because they're going to have to inside and outside clean.

So I've almost given you a battle stat, but it's very much only about attack in the 12 minutes or so that you have to attack. And when you see that and you compile that and you do it game after game after game, New Zealand, if you add those three together, have a 581 CPR index, we'll call it. This is a work in progress. Our friend Johan was talking to me about, you know, could you leaven it? Could you cross-tab it with collision just to bring some collision flavor, some G-force into it?

Because CPR gives you, the name is evocative, because it gives you an idea about how much work it takes to do an all-black style attack where you have to go from the carry, you have to keep the ball alive in a pass, which means you have to support, you don't know who it's going to be, and then you go to attend a ruck. You have to resource a ruck. that and then keep doing that, you know, 136 times the number of carries, building 150 rucks. Phenomenal, right? So 581 was top of the class for CPR.

And it doesn't mean that it's the best. It just means that's what they're doing more of. Bottom of the class, the exact opposite, but also in the top two of the world, South Africa at 290. I mean, you're looking at almost a double, a two-to-one ratio of a style. And yes, I'm using sort of a Makata exaggeration of a map, but that's what bonus points do.

That's what a lot of things do, is I'm showing you, I'm expanding that world and saying, in this sport where the acknowledged number one and number two for 130 years has been New Zealand and South Africa, over and over and over, the story is the same. Yes, every now and then someone reaches up at England, France, Ireland for a few weeks, but it's years and years and decades. It's crazy that New Zealand does a CPR of 581 and the Bucs, having scored the same amount and more points, 290. And that's the key. The key is when you look at the points scored through rounds two, I saw it was 87-81.

Competition, you know, Stavrika played Scotland and England. New Zealand played a sort of a weird French and then nobody. So I thought, well, maybe it'll even out. Well, now three rounds in, South Africa scored significantly more points, but there's still a massive gulf. And even against a team like Wales that said, here, have the ball.

Like, have it. Wales only built 25 rucks, so you build all the rucks you want. No, no, no, no, not for us. We don't build rucks. That's fascinating.

So 581, number one, New Zealand. You see Ireland trying to copy and getting 417. And in the matches prior, Ireland was actually building quite a lot of rucks, but they were not passing as much. And they suddenly decided against the All Blacks to fling the ball around. How did that work out for them?

Not well. It was those flung around passes that end up giving scrap merchants like Will Jordan easy tries, the easiest try he'll ever score. and then the French, you know, again, closer to South Africa, so 386. So it's 581 for New Zealand, 417 CPR for Ireland, 386 CPR for French, and 290 for the box at four. So what an interesting little bunch of numbers that not only survived the eye test, I mean, when you watch that and you watch the games, you see it, you go, yeah, yeah, I can see that.

then humanize what that looks like on the player just take a guy just say i am you know arty solea okay so i know i'm going to carry a lot i've got to make i've got to make all these cprs happen who's coming along with me is it josh lord is it sam dairy is it um asafa or more someone's got to do these things and it's not for everyone i mean you cannot send reuben lovin to do that so it is definitely a cast of characters 10, 12 guys in the All Blacks that know they have to come in and do these things. It shows you why you might pick Anton Leonard Brown, not a speedster, but a guy who can do these three things. I've got to do every one. I've got to do the C, the P, and the R. Everyone in the All Blacks has to rock except for the 10 and the 15.

So that's interesting, isn't it, Envia? The way that, and so I've got, I know your question was, but what about recent future, the recent past. So I went back and looked at Nations, the Autumn Nations series. And those numbers for New Zealand are the only ones that are different. Ireland's the same, French the same, Bucks the same.

Bucks and the French have been playing this scrapped game for a while. You could almost see it, the origin of it in the quarterfinal, the famous quarterfinal, where it was just a lot of frenetic activity and lots of different kinds of tries. but New Zealand post Razor and going to Renny has jumped up between 30% and 50% on each one of these C's, P's and R's in particular I would say they are throwing the ball around more, much more and so carries up 30% passes out of hand up 50 which is a phenomenal stat to change that much in the style of a game because the minute i move the the minute the second i moved the point of attack i also moved the rock where the rock going to be so now i thought i'm i'm ethan the crux i'm a big band and i'm chugging along i thought i was gonna do clean the rock by jordy barrett here but now jordy's let it go and now i'm finding in Quintupaya, and Quintupaya is about seven meters farther to the tram. Oof. Now, you don't think that makes you throw up.

That does. Yeah, so what did you think looking at these games? Did you see that? Did it seem to be that the teams are differing more, or is it just the same as it's always been? No, the All Blacks are clearly different, and it's difficult to put your finger on it.

You've violated it. I just want to ask you a couple of questions about your actual statistic. 581, is that now the combined total over the three games? Yes. All right.

That means even though they carry just one time, even if they carry 100 meters or 10 meters, it's one carry. And it just adds up. That's expressed per game, per round. So the raw total might be something like 1,745. Yeah.

So you worked it down as an average per match, basically. That's what you're saying. Right. Yeah. I look for volatility as well.

I didn't want to have a thing where it was, you know, born of a crazy stat. But it's not. Look at the carries for Ireland, 136, 138, 145. I mean, it's unbelievably constant. Look at the rucks formed by Ireland, 101, 103, 102.

I mean, the average, I could look at it and know what the average is. South Africa, I mean, unbelievably fewer, you know, 80, 75 rucks. So, that's a great question. So the number comes out to be per game because I thought it evoked something. If you start to know the CPR and you see 581, you know that's a lot of carries and rucks for sure.

And so the only variable probably is how many times you chose to throw the ball around. I want to ask you about the passes specifically because when I spoke to you Griffin this week, he said, I think it was a game against Italy. The All-Bucks passed the ball 300 times in one match. We've never seen that before. I mean, and how much does that translate into rock specifically?

You just mentioned you don't always have to rock. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to rock. But if you pass that often, what does it do to the rest of the game? You just take the ball and pass it on directly. Do you still carry?

Do you still end up in a rock? Where are the going of all these passes, basically what I'm asking? Yeah, unless anyone thinks that that's a one-off, they're averaging about 248. Let's just call 250. But that gives you a good eyeball for CPR.

are if 250 of that 581 is going to be passing then it gives you a good idea as to carry and rock because as you've alluded to carries and rock have a great relationship to each other a lot of carries end in a rock you know just think of a 12 a classic 12 carry by damon dialende i mean it usually ends in a rock because it's setting the rock in the middle of the field your first rock and it's the other thing you've planned you've done your starter play from set set piece and you hope it works you hope you score from it but if you do if you don't you've got a you've got a phase one rock one play already in the can you've got people lined up in a pod everything is clean in phase seven it's all you know pandemonium who knows who knows who's in what position doesn't matter anymore but there it does um your question about does a pass make it more or less likely well it still creates another carry and so you still got the potential for another carry and it It sets up the potential, you know, I'm not an offload now. I'm just talking about a classic, I got the ball, I don't know, I'm tipping it to someone else. You know, maybe two forwards. So maybe you've got Asafa Umua and he's tipping it to Peter Lakai. Well, what's going to happen there is you're in close quarters.

You're always going to end up in Iraq again, right? Unless you just keep going a bit like the box are doing. The box are doing forward to forward, you know, and that's why you're seeing the galloping sight of, you know, Cuba's visa more is they're looking for, you know, I saw Ben Jason Dixon maybe three or four times look for a tip to someone else. He knew he wasn't going through, tip it to someone on the charge and then see what happens. Something good will happen.

But you still at the end of that are going to have this secure the ruck or you're going to, you know, pass it from the floor or you're going to kick through. And so the kick through is what's terminating much more Bok possessions than all black possessions. All blacks are not on purpose early in the cycle, kicking to an awkward place, coffin corner or 50-22 attempt. They're just not doing that. Dave Rennie has specifically, it looks like, said, don't do that.

I want to exhaust other teams with this high CPR. are so the question becomes will he exhaust his own team right so in the end rennie has always had one big blemish on his book which is his teams get injured the wallabies were a walking wounded there was no team in rugby history that had more injured players than dave rennie's wallabies they were good at times they were muscular they were powerful but they set the record at one point they had over 20 players injured. And it was only explainable because of the style of rugby. They played the same style, the same ICPR. Yeah.

So it's a Rennie thing. That's not being translated into – that's how he sees the fear, I understand. I want to talk to you about the effect of the impact of that style of playing. But before we do that, we have to look at the opposite. The KA, I don't know what your abbreviation for that is, the way the Springboks play.

Because that paints a starkly different picture as well. We spoke about it last week, but now we can actually visualize it, what you've done here. But just as the All Blacks are unbelievably different from the rest and their head above shoulders on CPR, when you flip it around and look at what I've called the kick attack, but please, viewers, suggest better names. Work on it with us. Workshop this with us.

This is prototype still. And I know it doesn't, you know, I couldn't do a white paper peer-reviewed at MIT and this would, you know, pass muster. I understand this is a Rossi, Vincent van Gogh kind of painting of rugby that worked with us. On kick attack, it's exactly the same. There's one team that looms large that's like, you know, the statue at Rhodes when you came through.

Like, whoa, what's that? And it's the ability to attack with the kick by South Africa. The box way above everyone else. and no end in sight because when you look at mani labok sasha feinberg and gomazulu and now you have ahmed coming in through it's just you know these artists with the foot they can put the ball wherever they want and then you look at guys like damien villabser from the back um and then some of the young uh nines as well i mean hashim peed um you know it's unbelievable to watch imad khan different communities getting involved in this with their different paint strokes at 9 10 15 it really matters it's not there's not that much different than the life of a blindside or a lock okay that's going to be the your load is a lock and a blindside and a prop is going to be what it's going to be but how cool is it when you can add so many different types of attack kicks and this is what tony brown said in the very beginning when he got hired he said i cannot wait to work with the people with the kind of players that you guys have in south africa and under that statement he meant but he didn't say it is i feel like they've been held back i feel like i think tony thought from the opposition going why are they not letting those guys cook you know i mean come on look at a guy like money lubuk is he going to be your ice cold goal kicker no that's not his game but can he open up a team like he's a sushi chef slice and dice hibachi you absolutely and you won't even know what happened to you so it's very much like uh getting that in gear and tony brown has brought that to south africa so just the numbers are staggering what i did here is i just did an overlay i said um i'm not even sure how you call this in stat land but you go all the kicks that you made is one column um and this is like this is like if you're a salesperson and you do sales they give you a five-year moving average or something there's a way to make sure that your bad month doesn't kill you, but your great month doesn't define you. So 26, say, kicks, you know, is the average for the box per game.

It's 18 for the All Blacks. That's eight difference. That's actually quite a lot. But then you go in the next column is attacking kicks, kicks that were not for clearance. You were not exiting.

You were either going for 52, 22. You were going for possession regain. You were going for chip space. You were doing diagonals, whatever. 21 for the box, seven for the All Blacks.

Oh, something happened there. You know, when the All Blacks kicks, they're not kicking for attack. This is not the same. The first 24 you said, and this is not the same. Yeah, so I add another one.

Then I go deeper and add another one, which is contestable. So attacking kicks, which were contestable. A 50-22 is an attack kick. It's not contestable. It's too far away.

So now you have 15 a game, 15 contestables a game over three games for the box. Four for All Blacks. Whoa. Now, and I want to exaggerate that because I want to make sure it's really clear because if you're the opposition, it feels like that. If you have 15 bombs to defuse and six other attacking kicks that you have to wobble, find, chase, that's a lot of work.

That changes your backfield. Concomitantly, if you're facing the All Blacks and they only put up four contestables, I mean, why do I, does it even factor into my selection patterns? I mean, maybe I pick a short guy if I'm Scotland. Maybe, you know, maybe I go with speed. But if I have 15 I have to defuse, it makes me select.

You know, I see Rossi's team on a Monday, I go, oh, shit. Now what do I do? You know, so then I have to, then I start messing around. Now I'm in your head, right? So that column is contestables.

And then the final column, which is juicy, is the ones I got back. How many kicks did I get back? And again, the box six, a game three for New Zealand. So it all comes out to twice as much. But in this world, aggregate matters much more than percentage on kicks regain.

Because if I regain six kicks, it's still six kicks that I have behind your enemy lines, behind defensive lines. It's like shots on goal in soccer. It's the thing you're trying to do, which is get behind the other person. So columns, kicks total. Column two is attacking kicks.

Column three is contestable kicks. And column four is regains. Add them all up, and I get a score of between 68 and 72 for the box, depending on who's keeping the stat. 68 to 72. This is K-68.

And then the next one, the second is French 46. They don't contest the ball as much. So that's what brings them down. They kick a lot, and they attack a lot, but they don't contest. Ireland 41.

So there's just sort of your pack. and then 32 for New Zealand. And that's, you're looking at that and you're saying, that's again, that's twice as much. I like this illustration side by side, because when you see that they had about the same amount of time in attack, the box have scored more points, right? Which is the ultimate goal of rugby, excuse us, but that's it.

Doesn't matter how you did it, but that's it. But I want to know how you did it because it's interesting. And the reason why it's interesting about how you did it is maybe it's more sustainable. And so we've talked about injury. When you play the kick attack, yes, Peter Steff, De Toye, and even Etzabeth do chase kicks, but not all tight forwards do.

Some tight forwards stand. Vlokolo stands where he is. He makes sure he's onside, and he goes to the pre-selected discharge point. There's a zone where he goes. He's happy, trust me.

and when you're playing the CPR, you don't get a rest. You're Fletcher Newell and you've been working on your bench press and you're up to 200 kgs. You have to go run still just like everyone else. That's why in tournaments and over seasons and when it all comes down to it, the style requires more of you in some ways and it might not work. Whereas the French and South African style requires less of the tight forwards, keeping them fresher for the dynamic smash they need At line out at lift lifting a guy hard guys You have to lift a guy it very tiring and then malls look how the malls can sap you there another point here though peter steph the toy i always listen when peter steph talks he said because he's very he's unartful he's not a he's not a guy who's trying to fool you he's gonna say exactly what's on his heart and uh i mean that he's a very sincere guy he's talking about the system all the time nowadays And I was thinking about putting younger players and changing combinations in a system that is high on the KA and not so much on the CPR is easier.

It's an easier fit because there's so many coordinations and body languages and subtle shrugs. You've got to read about when the guy usually offloads, what height does the receiver like it? choices at cleaning on the rock. You saw Luke Jacobson. The reason why he hit the guy was because he was late.

He didn't get there in time. That's what it was. He wasn't thinking, I want to be dirty. He was thinking, geez, I'm late. Let me catch up.

It's like when you're driving on the highway, you're going to go to Sandton and you miss your exit. And you go, let me just cut across five lanes of traffic and do it. So that's what happens. And then you're all wrong and you have a collision. so I think that is where Peter Steff de Toy was saying it's always in response to a journalist saying a lot of changes this week Peter how do you think Peter Steff and he goes well we trust the system you know if you can get into the system and buy the system and maybe he's saying in a nice way like he always does and if you don't then you won't be around you know for the next cycle.

And you can see that. You can see that this system is built on a lot of things, but not everyone's a kick chaser. So you know who you are. Not everyone's a kicker. So you know who you are.

Not everyone's a scrap man. You know who those guys are. And it works a lot better when the scrap man is there, the junkyard dog is there instead of, you know, the horse. They don't have the hands um you know bless his heart i think jesse creel could be a scrap man but he's got to work a little bit on some of the the handling um but you know you guys like currently aren't so chess and colby when they're around scraps you know it's for some reason it sticks in their hands maybe they're lower to the ground or maybe they don't do as much on leg days jesse but they really get down and they get dirty they get those scraps and i love those and i've been watching the box shape around kicks, and this is where Jesse gets it exactly right, by the way, he's always in the spot where the ball is like 80% likely to fall. So that's why he gets those tries.

Will Jordan does that. So if Will Jordan was a springbok, you know, imagine what kind of other tries he would score. He would just be loving life. Not against Australia. Because I mean, I just think there's people who know where the ball is going to go.

So you have Scrapman, you have big man chasing. You have aerial artists. And you also have another thing, which is Marco van Staden, Eskom, Sierkulisi, getting you right when you catch the ball. So all those things are now open. Four chaser types.

So everyone falls into that. But there's still some people who don't do any of that. Volko Lowe. I don't think you're going to have Carlos Sadi's not going to be tearing down the field trying to chase something or get scrap so that's in a way you're giving them a gift you're saying load up guys because there's coming a scrum you know very likely um yeah those are the big takeaways i'm watching these i want to i want to change these i want to make them more visual um and i think they tell a story which is what stats should do yeah we can talk about the merits of either of each i want to just ask you one question about this now because now you talked about this kick attack and it's a system i've had a bee in my bonnet this week about the fact that the springboks haven't played their first team together at all the all blacks have done that week after week and our very first time our team is going to run out and the field is going to be against the all blacks we're not going to send the first choice team to argentina we're not so now first test now we go now we're expecting to be cohesive and if we solve what a lack of cohesion can do against scotland for example simply because they're not used to playing with each other no matter how good the system is but isn't that part of us is planning to the fact that you just said. It's a simple game plan.

You know what you need to do. We've got these little cohorts. You've got your forwards. You've got this. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do.

And on game day, when it gets closer and it's an actual team, they'll gel easily, more easily, actually, than the All Blacks with all these frantic passing and carrying and rucking and everything else. Is that maybe why he's taking almost the liberty of not playing the team together? Is that why he's feeling comfortable to do that? Because I'm worried about that, to be honest. Yeah, no, it's obviously a legitimate worry because for the whole life of rugby, we've said that you need that.

Time in the saddle together, especially in the back line. There's just a lot of things you have to remember. So I think this year it's been different though. So Damien and Jesse have played a lot together. Even in games where you didn't think it really mattered that much.

And you have seen some combinations in the front row. So you have seen, again, you've seen 80 minutes every time from Peter Steff to Tui. So there's this idea of who needs time in the saddle and who doesn't. It's one of those. I mean, for example, Ibn Esabeth has been known for his whole career that he walks in from a layoff and he's immediately good.

He's the best player on the field. And Peter Steff has always been a guy that has to work his way in. He's not great on the first time, but you give him lots of reps and he likes it. He's hungry for work. D'Allende, same thing.

Give him more game time. It's okay. Just keep going. He's so robust. It's hard to hurt him.

He's really difficult to hurt for some reason. And then you have other players that can be overplayed and doesn't really do much good. That's the first one. Second one, the practices are ferocious. They're playing against each other.

And this is just a little bird telling me something. So take it for what you will. significantly more than a province at club level. And I'm talking about actual contact, right? So maybe we've heard this about the prop saying that it's harder to scrum against each other than against opposition, because it's true that the box probably have, they can probably put two scrummaging packs together that are better than anyone else's scrum.

This is not Venkat. I'm just saying there are other things that we're worse at, but this is one thing that you could say that's better you know i don't know if you were trying to practice um you know passing from 13 to wing we wouldn't be the top okay so you know i'll throw there's more stuff in there that we're not good at too that is definitely you get more out of scrumaging against each other than against opposition so that's that's actually a really big point line out similar in that you can you know if you have enough locks healthy you can kind of simulate you can simulate that set piece pretty well it's not like you see it's not like the game is that different from a practice line out as long as you say hey guys go lie i want you to beat each other like you know and you motivate them as i think the buck camp does so there's enough ferocious in in fighting maybe the third thing is the most important is you don't own the jersey anymore with some exceptions there are some players maybe five or six where come a hell of high water you know you know you know um that's actually been something that russie has fought against he doesn't want that he wants um competition at all times not that he thinks one person is better than the other if it was a knockout final in australia but against this matchup it might be different at nine and ten and fifteen there are matchups that could be different and better. For me, Willem is the best at fullback. And he's the best at anybody, against anybody. But at 10, I can totally see that I don't know who's best.

I don't know. I think Manny Lubbock would be the best against, you know, five different countries or different scenarios. I think it would be Sasha against seven. I think it'd be Andre against two or three. And I think it'd be, who knows?

Like who's coming up? Vusi or Ahmed, who knows? I think that's the design. So maybe we're looking at a different, maybe we're looking at the wrong way, which is, you know, we got to get the right guys together, the best guys. That's what the All Blacks have been doing is these are our best guys.

Oh, geez, let's make sure that Ruben Love has a lot of reps. And then Ruben Love gets hurt. And I think he's badly hurt from what it looked like to me. Yeah, so now where do I go? Do I go back to Damien McKenzie?

Oh, boring. I mean, we've seen that. We can make him drop the ball, you know, the final 10 minutes, he doesn't know how to score. So I think it's better to do what they're doing long term. It has one problem is that they could catch us in the first game in the greatest rivalry and just do exactly what the Olex do, right?

Put a razzle dazzle and keep scoring and don't stop, you know, like Ellis Park a year ago. And you have this nightmare scenario where literally when I talked to Rossi in Cape Town post-match, I said, how nervous were you? like you know because that was staring down a barrel you lose to australia twice and he said jesus is one of the most nervous as i've been in like a long time so okay here's my final theory and don't stone me if it's if it's too crazy i think russi likes to be nervous i think russi likes to create obstacles for himself you know it's almost like adrenaline junkie otherwise gets bored i can i can see that i can i can clearly see that i've got some of that in me i could i recognize it he's like oh let me let me impose a false and artificial uh added difficulty you know renny's been head down just do this do this and russie's like and what if i put five uncapped guys in you know whatever i don't know what he's gonna do but But no, I think there's residual memory. To answer your first question is like, what about, can they come together and cohere in time? So, Jesus, people have been playing together for a long time.

I was looking at Pollard and DeToy, you know, looking, they were standing with each other. And I researched, they've been playing since 2014 together at the buck level. It's wild. So what's the use of building all those def? You're just going to go with the old term.

you know so that is the question to me number one how important is this nation's championship or is it still all about the world cup and secondly how important is this greatest rivalry like you just said russie likes to make things a little bit more difficult and more challenging i suppose less boring you know what how bad would it be if we lose against the all blacks if we lose the series or throw the series for example you know that's just ups the stakes a little bit he's not going to get fired or anything maybe it's a bit of a way to to light the fire under you know certain people or certain, you know, whatever, you know where you're going with this. Like everything with Rossi, there's lots of things true at the same time. So I have a very reliable authority that he cares a lot about the world ranking index. That he likes the idea of, you know, it's pretty much been South Africa top number one. And he likes that.

Keeping there, staying there. Setting records is a big thing for him. like how long have we been number one uninterrupted and make that more than the 2015 steve hansen all blacks just take the claim that we're the best ever right so that's and the nation's championship makes the world ranking better because we've usually not had head to heads in this time of the year and and people actually pick their real teams so this is making the index more reliable um so that's one thing and but it also not only does it make it more reliable if you keep winning and you have a greatest rivalry series the box can put distance between themselves and number two and that's helpful so that you can then bring more people in rest some players in the beginning of 2027 and still go into the world rugby uh into rugby world cup as number I think he wants to go back to back to back as a favorite. That's what he wants. That's my contention.

Number two, what matters to him a lot is the all blacks rivalry. Think about as a boy what he grew up thinking how that it that the pinnacle and so each decade uh one of the teams had had it over the other you go back to the you know 30s 40s 50s 60s and then um in this century the first two decades were really horrible for us and so he's rescued this decade in this decade we're clearly the boss and you know you can take that any way you want lost 10 matches lost five matches it's four to one right now in the last five matches and some wise are set on on x to me uh some kiwi said yeah but if we played in new zealand more it would be it would be different mate i'm like out of the five of the last five games two of them have been in south africa so how many do you want how much handicap do you need little brother i wish we played in your little backyard okay let's play in wellington every day and see what happens let's go to every week and let's see how we do there next time right so i think that's um that's been restored and so part of me thinks there's no way rossi wants to go back on that and give that up that's one of the great things is because it's one thing to say you're number one because you got there by ratings or by some permutation but no you're beating the all blacks and you should beat them and you beat them and you beat them again and the only time they win is an artie surveyor steel you know the seven infringements um hanging on but that you know at the end going ah you know relief whereas we've pummeled them so um that's important i still think the ireland one bothers him that it's uh it just seems parity there it just seems to bother him that's where you need to solve that yeah yeah I think that's why the scrum, that's why we did the humiliation, you know, just shove your face in the mud with the scrum because we're like, look, I don't know if we can beat you the other way, but we're going to beat you this way. So we have the ability to play different ways. So here's a question I have had in my head with the CPR, the kick attack. we know that rugby is interesting because on any given day especially in a final you might have to switch your tactics and go plan b or you might have an injury or a card or you're at oranges and you say this is not working you know like what ireland had to say to themselves uh this weekend i yeah so does can the box play kiwi ball better than the all blacks can play bock ball you know and that's the part that i always wonder about you know if you have if If push came to shove and you have to do it, I do think that Rossi has said, let's make sure we can still fling the ball around and play some really high octane rugby.

I'm kind of worried that nobody in Kiwiland ever plays the way we play ever anymore at Super Rugby, in the NPC. They don't have anyone, no one's allowed to play from overseas. So I just wonder if they become a little bit isolated. And I say I don't like that because I like the rivalry to be as great as possible. We can talk to Devlin.

Marty Devlin is going to be on this week. We've talked to him about that as, you know, they're putting a lot of eggs in one basket, which is can you fling it around like this 250 times a game and you're not going to drop it at the critical point? I mean, how many times has Cheslin Colby intercepted an all-black pot? It's a lot. He is, you know, he's feasting off those.

And if you give me, you know, I'm not going to be intercepting anyone, but if you just give me all the tape, all the vision of all those bosses, I will work out. If I'm Felix Jones, I will find a predictable problem there. There's somebody who shows what they're going to do before they do it. Sure as shit. I'm sure of it.

And you can read that. And that's what I think Colby can do. I think you touched on something important. We saw it last night against Wales. The Springboks weren't worried about knocking on because they can have a scrum.

so the All Blacks are going to throw the ball 300 times, they're going to knock it sometime so we can have a scrum. And I was smiling at the commentator here saying somewhere, yeah, there's still some people in World Rugby who think a scrum penalty is a good thing or a nice thing, whatever it was. And I think, okay, well, let's wait till we get to Eden Park, or Alice Park, I mean. So, yeah, that's interesting. I wanted to ask you just lastly in closing, CPR, I think, is a very apt acronym, whatever you want to call it, because they're probably going to, somebody is one of those two teams going to need CPR at the end of the day, because someone is going to be dead on their feet kind of a thing.

whose team is it going to be and i think it goes down to i suppose uh conditioning strength conditioning and the likes how fit are they how good are they taking impacts like you just said trucks you know it takes more out of the body the spring box trying to save themselves but they get pulled into the rucks you know who's what does that demand of the teams apart from the skills physically what will it demand from them no that's a great point on that rock thing so i don't have to be involved in a rock if i'm a defender if i'm an attacker i have to once i build a rock it's It's super dangerous for me to leave it unattended because you've all seen the nine get barged or there'll be a counter come late. That's great rugby, actually, by the way. So I think, you know, it depends on how they want to use Paul De Villiers, if they use him at all. But if we don't go in with a fetcher-fetcher and Malcolm Marks is his own coach, he knows when to go, when not to go. We might just choose not to be ruck merchants that much.

We might barge and counter, but we're not going to be trying to put our hands in the cookie jar unless the ref tells us that it's okay. If Paul de Villiers continues his, you know, meteoric rise, then I suppose we'll think again because he's too valuable a weapon not to get him in there. ESCOM can do some of that as well, and our hookers can. But, yeah, that's very interesting. The thing about rucks, though, you can build all the rucks you want.

They can be pretty. They can be, you know, well-formed. They can be wonderful castles. but the first time someone had a projectile weapon, you know, they were done. So, you know, that's the problem with all this stuff is if I can send a Paul de Villiers, you know, and he dives under your moat and puts explosives in your sewage system or something, it kills it because you don't have to do it every ruck.

You just have to do it once every five rucks, once every ten rucks. attack over. That's Sam Warburton. Hello, David Pocock. I remember him.

He did that to us. It doesn't matter how many rucks you build and how many you march up the field in perfect sequential harmony, and then they just always do you at the end. You're like, okay, that was never going to work. Could I do a 20 phase attack? No.

The All Blacks have to learn how to score in three phases or less. That's what the French, that's what the Bucs are doing. That's what I think. I could be wrong. They could have a secret weapon that they're going to pull out, but I don't see it.

If Ruben Love's now injured as badly as we expect he might be, Mwanga may not be picked, as far as I'm aware. You know, who are they going to be down to? You just said Damien McKenzie, Bowdoin Barrett coming in, he hasn't played. You know what I mean? That's the risk of what you were just saying.

Playing this kind of game, having a settled team, but no one to fall back on. So then it goes back to the death argument again. I see they might be a bit, especially after four games plus the games against the franchises. It's going to be a demanding tour. Yes, they're going to bring a lot of players over, I suppose, but still, at the end of the four games, they're going to be staggering around, last man standing kind of a thing, I'm sure.

They're going to be running low on stock. Yeah, so what they're doing is they're putting an extraordinary amount on Cam Roigard. Cam Roigard is really, they're playing off Cam. And so, partly because Ruben was still working his way in, less than 10 caps, but also because they play together as well at the Canes. So they're used to doing this and Cam Roigard is sort of like, he's like Antoine Dupont with a better pass.

Spot fired. I mean, he just is. He's a better, he's a more complete nine. Antoine Dupont might be one of the best players without a number on his back, but Roigard's a nine. I mean, he's a nine.

Like Luku is. Luku's a nine. So I wonder about that. I think maybe it's all on Cam. I think that's the greatest vulnerability of the All Blacks is Cam Roigard.

That he throws 115 passes a game. When you're throwing one of those and you could hit at the same time by somebody with angry intent, you can get really hurt really quickly. How many times did Farid Dupriya lose his shoulder because he was trying to get hit? this is going to happen to cam roy guard a lot in his career he plays a lot of rugby he plays into contact he's a big boy he's not afraid um and i think that's going to hurt him if you have cam roy guard gone oh you know that's that's a big gulf between him and cortez ratima um so yeah i'm agreeing with you both at nine and ten but if you so if you're gonna have a fragile 10 issue issue and you have to go back to the troll maca damien mckenzie i mean he just always drops the ball i mean the critical moments he does uh he misses lots of tackles so i think that's a step backward i i prefer damien as sort of a you know utility back you know put him in where he needs to go i don't i don't think him he ran the ship in um in those games in uh africa that i was at and i never felt afraid i always thought nah you know sasha can handle him or you you know, he doesn't have, to me, he doesn't have that straight-edged athleticism. As a whole, though, the All Blacks look very athletic.

I like the new boys that are coming in. The German is amazing. Anton Senor, what a great story. This kid from Germany just moves to New Zealand. It's unbelievable, actually, yeah.

Yeah. And they're very athletic and I, and just, just as Nations Championship, just an overall comment, I think the athletic golf is what really matters here. I think the All Blacks box and Wallabies, even though they're kind of a rabble sometimes. They're just significantly more athletic. Add Argentina as well.

And Fiji, super athletic. Doesn't know what they're doing, but they're athletic. And you go across the other side, I think only the French can match up at a squad level for speed, vertical leap, broad jump, bench, power, explosive load, just ability to literally be a better athlete. I think you look at Scotland, England, and Ireland, and for all three of those you go, whew, your depth on that is very, very thin. On this championship in closing, just quickly, look at the tables right now.

South Africa and New Zealand way ahead. France, you know, top of the other league. But clearly, head and shoulders above the rest. But only two of those might end up playing in the final. Might not be the best two teams.

And I think that's going to catch up to this championship at one stage. Whether this artificial southern hemisphere or northern hemisphere thing is going to catch up where it's not going to be the two best teams. If you want to see the two best teams playing like in a World Cup final, I understand they don't want to dilute the World Cup by sort of having a mini World Cup over six months rather than over six weeks. But they're going to have to rethink this thing so that the All Blacks and the Spimals can play in a final for France, whoever the best teams might be. I'm not sure how they're going to do it.

It's just the thought that I'm having. I mean, I'm not the expert on anything. I just think this artificiality, that's a big word, is going to catch up to this thing. I think so. Yeah.

So maybe, I'm just thinking as you're talking, maybe you could guarantee semifinals of the top four where there was two and two, hemispheric. But then whoever wins, wins. And I can already hear the Irish and the French saying, no, it's going to be All Black's box again. Well, that's the point. If it's the best that's what you want.

I'm not saying it's going to be them, but still. So that would mean in this particular year, you have five matches between the All Blacks in the box. It'd be great. Yeah, and obviously they're going to run out of time at the end of November. There's not enough time there.

You can't have a semifinal on Thursday and a final on Sunday. It's not soccer. It has a bit of an anti-climax to it. But that really did happen in the World Cup in 2023 where you had the quarterfinals were by far the most consequential, more than the semifinals. So it was amazing to watch those.

Okay, Harry, thank you for that. Let's get this out on a Sunday so people have something to watch just tonight. Keep them busy. That's awesome, man. Cheers.

Enjoy it. This is the Lekker Rugby Pod. Only on Megaphone Rugby.

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