All Blacks stun stuttering Springboks and Rassie responds with wholesale changes for Cape Town

Shaun and Thala review New Zealand’s victory over South Africa at Ellis Park in the first test of Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry.

We first give our flowers to the All Blacks for their ruthlessly efficient attack and resolute defence. We discuss how they dug out of a huge hole in the middle of the game and won the big moments to score 5 tries to win at the end. We also rave on the performances of Jordie Barrett, Tupou Va’ai, Fabian Holland and discuss why Will Jordan’s game was more than just his two tries.

We break down what went wrong for South Africa, including Kurt-Lee Arendse’s early injury throwing the Springbok backline into chaos, an erratic performance from Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and some questionable substitutions from Rassie Erasmus. While Jasper Wiese and Damian Willemse shone, the backs especially looked out of sync with each other, as many of them had to play out of position for most of the gam.

We also debate the 23 selected for the Cape Town test as Rassie makes 7-8 changes, which include a return of Handre Pollard and Ethan Hooker to the starting team and a possible return for Siya Kolisi and whether this fixes the problems from the first test.

We finally preview a possibly entertaining All Blacks v Lions game later this week, Australia are about to play Argentina over two tests and the Black Ferns wallop the Wallaroos in the Wallaroos’ 100th test match.