A podcast verdict that landed harder than any tackle
Seven points. That is the number Robbie Fleck kept circling back to on Boks Unpacked this morning, and the number he hung around Ruben Love’s neck.
The former Springbok centre was asked what the All Blacks were missing in South Africa. He didn’t reach for a system or a selection call. He named the 25-year-old fly-half.
Love started the first six Tests under Dave Rennie, the three in South Africa among them. For the finale in Baltimore he lost the shirt, with Richie Mo’unga recalled for his first cap since the 2023 World Cup final. Rennie insisted nobody had been dropped.
Fleck read it another way. “A brilliant player but young, and maybe a bit naive in terms of leadership, in not taking those points and those chances,” he said. Then came the line that will follow Love around: “He cracked under the pressure.”
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The maths of a 29-24 defeat
Love’s boot misfired in the third Test. South Africa won it 29-24.
Fleck did the sum out loud: “If you add those seven points, at the end of that match they probably win that third Test.”
He was fair enough about the context around it. Fifteen minutes of total South African control swung the thing, and before Ardie Savea went off the All Blacks had the Test roughly where they wanted it. Fine margins, every one of them falling the wrong way.
The final Test handed him more ammunition. “He started that last Test with a poor kick to touch,” Fleck said, before summing up the tour like this: “The further the series went on, the more I felt his performances dropped off.”
Kevin Foote thinks the problem sits above the No 10
Foote, who runs the Junior Springboks, took the same panel somewhere broader. His view: New Zealand are too wedded to doing it their own way. Rennie has built the side around all-out attack. Foote would take the three.
“I would say you have to take the points, because they have the ability to score tries,” he argued. “Take the points, build the pressure, and when the tries come, they’ll take them.”
He offered a structural reason too. The South African franchises walked away from Super Rugby, and with them went the weekly exposure to that brand of Test-level nastiness. You can’t manufacture it on a training paddock.
None of which means Fleck has written the player off. He still reckons Love can become “one of the best players on the planet in a few years.”
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