Twelve months ago almost to the day, New Zealand forwards coach Jason Ryan heralded a new era All black people scrummaging. His charges were caught napping on a late scramble at the Eden Park fortress and were thrown off their own feed by a quick trot in the first match Rugby Championship doubleheader against the Springboks. The morning after the embarrassment, the last remaining member of Ian Foster’s 2023 World Cup coaching squad explained to the assembled Kiwi media that it was a one-off:
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“We just want to get (the ball) out and play to be fair, but there’s one (scrum) where they went up on us, we lost our footing, tried to come back, and it was just too late. So it’s going to be a ‘never again’ moment.”
Regardless of the hair of the dog or the medicine of the snake oil salesman, a constant headache lasts significantly longer than a day. As early as next week in Wellington’s ‘Cake Tin’, the Kiwi scrum took another few steps back, with the hangover still hanging like a black cloud overhead after Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series ended in Baltimore at the weekend. There are precious few signs that the patient is getting better, let alone fully recovered. The New Zealand scrum still needs regular weekly ventilator sessions to stay alive.
It’s an unfortunate, if not entirely unexpected, outcome for one of the world’s three largest nations. In a series overviewI wrote that the Boks would look to maximize their penalty advantage from their own scrum feed, and that’s where the All Blacks had to stop them. As every other major tournament around the world has proven time and time again, ‘dominance’ is a one-way street and it’s all about getting the job done on your own feed:
New Zealand’s apparent helplessness around South Africa’s throw-in told a worrying story of recent decline, and Dave Rennie’s description of the set-piece performance in the press after the Baltimore match – “I thought our set-piece was a lot stronger tonight, and we’ll have a lot of confidence in that” – will not apply to the All Blacks’ support. The All Blacks conceded three penalties and one free kick in four scrums when the Springboks’ strongest combination of Ox Nche, Malcolm Marx and Wilco Louw were on the field. Parity that is not.
Rewind the clock for a moment to 2021. Sky Sport’s The Breakdown subscribers had no hesitation in naming the World Cup-winning trio of Tony Woodcock, Keven Mealamu and Owen Franks in their starting line-up in ‘The New Zealand’s Greatest XV’. Who could argue? Between them, the trio amassed 358 caps and, along with Franks’ predecessor in the No.3 jersey Carl Hayman, embodied the most consistent phase in New Zealand’s racing history in the 11 years between 2004 and 2015.
Sir Graham Henry has identified a huge improvement in scrum performance as one of the key performance indicators to usher in a new era of national success after the disappointment of the 2003 semi-final defeat to Eddie Jones’ Wallabies. Within 12 months his ‘scrum doctor’ Mike Cron had increased the measurable output of a 10kg scum machine to 10kg scum. 2000 kilograms. No one, not even forwards as formidable as Tendai ‘The Beast’ Mtawarira and Bismarck Du Plessis, would force their way into that New Zealand front row at their peak.
How things have changed since Franks’ final game for the All Blacks on August 10, 2019. That date, and South Africa’s withdrawal from Super Rugby the following year, marked New Zealand’s ticket for the fight. Since then, there has been a gradual deterioration, culminating in consistent penalty kicks last season against both England and Boxing, to full scale in the current RGR series. The Scrum Dam has finally broken, and now it needs to be rebuilt from scratch.
A deep dive into the All Blacks’ scrum performance during the series first reveals a huge disparity between front-row and bench stats:
Whatever their starting front row combination, the All Blacks were unable to get into the circle on a consistent basis. In contrast, the performance of the front row off the bench was far better, with the finishers clearly solving the problems faced by the starting unit, even when the Springboks’ ‘powerful’ front row (Nche-Marx-Louw) were moved to the back end of the game in Cape Town. The All Blacks were nothing less than comfortable during the scrum in the last half hour.
The unwillingness to act on the underperformance of Codie Taylor and Tyrel Lomax, who both started three of the four Tests, was critical. At the age of 35, the series proved too far for Taylor, while Lomax was never able to recapture his leading form from 2024 after a long injury layoff. The article argued that the 2026 All Blacks needed iron-clad performances from Lomax and his cohorts on the Springbok feed to have any chance of winning the RGR series. That was non-negotiable. They didn’t get them.
The only time the starting New Zealand front row could operate in anything approaching comfort was under the more benign, forgiving gaze of Australian umpire Angus Gardner in the second Test, and against a Springbok reserve unit of Gerhard Steenekamp, Deon Fourie and Thomas Du Toit. 14 of 15 scrum penalties were conceded when the Bok big boys – Nche, Marx and Louw – started the game.
Individual analysis based on my database rating system provides a rough summary of individual performance:
With all three of their ratings in the 30-40 range, the starting front row of either Bower or de Groot, Taylor and Lomax was below par for the track. It was the bench front row of Xavier Numia, Asaf Aumua and Fletcher Newell that came closest to creating the stable platform using the ball in the set-up that Rennie said he wanted, and which New Zealand will need if they are to lift the ‘Bills’ for a fourth time in Australia next november.
The most worrying brawl incident of all occurred outside the Test matches, early in the second half of the midweek match against the Lions.
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 13, 2026
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) August 26, 2026
The Lions the front row is the least imposing tackle unit among the four URC franchises, with three players in SJ Kotze, PJ Botha and Sebastian Lombardo unlikely to ever pull on the green and gold jersey. That trio was surpassed by their opponents – Siale Lauaki, Samisoni Taukei’aho and Pasilio Tosi with over 12 kilograms per man.
On the tight side of the All Blacks’ front row, Tosi enjoyed a 30kg advantage over Kotze, but none of that advantage is felt during a push attempt that first veers to the right and then crosses the goal line unopposed after Tosi goes down on the deck. The corner behind the posts shows it ‘strolling’ (Dave) before becoming ‘punching’ (Rassie), but that’s a conversation for another day.
Whatever the technical rights and wrongs of the squabbles, the most worrying feature from a Kiwi perspective is that the coaches never seemed to find a solution to it, so the hole in the dike just continued to grow. The blueprint for the Springbok scrum was laid out as long ago as the France-South Africa game in November:
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) September 7, 2026
The Springbok sets up at an angle, Marx shifts to attack the right shoulder of the opponent’s hook and break the connection with the man on his right, the loose head goes into his ‘walk’ and all the Bok back-five forwards take a small step to the left before going straight forward. Everything was there, in dazzling black and white.
The only struggle in which the All Blacks successfully defended the tactic came in the only game they won, the first Test at Ellis Park:
— William Bishop (@RPvids1994) August 23, 2026
Aumua successfully blocks Louw, so he can’t penetrate and starts moving to the side instead of forward. As a result, Marx and Steenekamp begin to drag or drag the scrum to the left around Newell at the other end, and the All Blacks win a penalty.
The All Blacks’ performance in the scrum in the RGR series fell far short of the standards set by Craig Dowd, Sean Fitzpatrick and Olo Brown at the start of the professional era, and Woodcock, Mealamu and either Hayman or Franks in their World Cup-winning years. Perhaps one of those twin titans of yesteryear, Ken Gray or Kevin Skinner, was needed to steady the ship.
In 1956, New Zealand went to war with South Africa, four years after a tour of the Republic where they lost all four Test matches and their front-rowers fled the country like sheep, frightened by the strength of the Springboks’ front-row. They remembered Skinner, a well-known heavyweight boxer, who knocked out first Chris Koch, then Jaap Bekker in a short period of time at the third test in Christchurch. Koch was on his knees, trying to find his front teeth in a vise in Christchurch when Skinner offered a gold ring as a peacemaker: ‘here, make a pair of it!’
If New Zealand are to break out of Springbok scrum dominance now, they must start by developing a new heavyweight prop for a tighthead over the next 12 months, whether it’s Tamaita Williams or Saula Ma. If it means relaxing overseas selection guidelines for choosing Sione Ahio Stade Rochelais in time for the World Cup, put the rule book aside and do it. No more games, because this is no longer a sport, it’s a war.
