A personnel problem, not a refereeing one
Hanyani Shimange watched the third Test between the Springboks and the All Blacks and reached a blunt conclusion. New Zealand cannot repair their scrum, and their maul defence is a coaching failure.
South Africa built the win at FNB Stadium in Soweto on the set piece. Malcolm Marx scored off a driving maul. Rassie Erasmus’s pack earned a penalty try from the scrum and won four more penalties there.
Dave Rennie and senior assistant coach Neil Barnes have argued that the Springboks do not scrummage legally. They also conceded they will have to adapt, because World Rugby does not accept the complaint.
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Shimange rejects the legality argument
Speaking on the Verdict show, the former Springboks hooker dismissed the idea that officiating is the issue. He put the scrum problem down to personnel and said New Zealand have no route out of it.
“How do they change the props? How do you fix that scrum? You can’t, and it’s going to be an ongoing problem,” he said.
Shimange pointed to a line of South African tightheads running from Tendai Mtawarira through Frans Malherbe to Wilco Louw, and said the only penalised moment he could recall was one double-banked scrum. “It’s just something we’re bossing at the moment,” he said.
Schalk Burger pushed back, at least partly. He noted that the same New Zealand pack dominated its other Nations Championship fixtures. “Shimmy, it’s only an issue against South Africa,” Burger said, framing the gap as one between the world’s first and second best set pieces rather than a New Zealand collapse.
The warning signs came early on tour
Shimange traced the problem back to the opening fixtures of the tour, when South African United Rugby Championship sides did similar damage and nothing changed afterwards.
“The warning signs were there in the first game of the tour against the Stormers,” he said, before adding that the Lions pushed New Zealand off a scrum as well.
He treated the maul separately, and put that one squarely on the coaching staff. In his reading, the Springboks conceded front ball at the lineout, marched the All Blacks backwards and forced Asafo Aumua to break and play. Shimange called it a coaching error and argued that New Zealand sides rarely face that kind of drive outside these fixtures.
Rennie’s next chance to prove otherwise arrives with the same opponents still sitting above him in every set-piece measure that matters.
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