An accusation that does not wash
Dave Rennie kicked off the row during the series between South Africa and New Zealand. The All Blacks coach accused South Africa loosehead Ox Nche of angling his way round the scrum. He stood by it after the Cape Town defeat.
Steven Kitshoff has now fired back. “I do not think the Springboks are guilty of that. No, definitely not,” the former prop said, cited by Netwerk24 at the launch of his autobiography, Kitsie: Memoir of a Bomb-Squad Bok, on Tuesday.
His view carries weight for good reason. 83 caps, two world titles, and a career spent at the heart of South African packs. He worked with Daan Human, the Boks’ scrum guru, from 2019 to 2023.
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Backing the Human system
Kitshoff spells out the approach in plain terms. “If you listened to Daan’s press conference, he said he coaches in one way only: drive straight. Turning in is a sin in Daan’s eyes.”
Human was saying much the same thing before the Soweto Test. “We always try 100% to do things by the book,” he said. “I can never cheat or tell the players to turn in.”
The former prop adds a technical wrinkle the TV pictures do not always catch. “Sometimes the referee cannot see what is happening on the other side of the scrum,” he explains. He points to Baltimore, where referee Karl Dickson looked ready to penalise the Boks before his assistant stepped in.
Rennie faces the same mess Erasmus once did
Rennie’s complaint got him nowhere. The New Zealand coach took his grievances to World Rugby, only to admit the body was not backing him. His players then got pinged for not setting their feet, much to the irritation of assistant Neil Barnes.
Kitshoff, meanwhile, throws the All Blacks a comparison they may not enjoy. Before Rassie Erasmus arrived in 2018, South Africa had slipped to seventh in the world rankings. Eighteen months later, they were lifting the World Cup. “When you look at the All Blacks across the whole series, there are a lot of similarities with the Boks in 2017 and 2018,” he said.
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