The Greatest Rivalry tour has finally begun. But there’s work to do for the All Blacks

The Stormers are three weeks into pre-season and the All Blacks’ second-string team was full of players with little recent game time, many of whom last played a competitive game back in June. That lack of cohesion and combinations was very evident in Cape Town last Friday night.

The Stormers put in a huge physical effort against the visitors, but were always going to flag before full time with the All Blacks finishing over the top of them as expected. What is concerning is the post-match musings in the New Zealand press that any other outcome was likely.

The NZ TAB, for example, set the line for this game at 36.5 points. That’s donation territory, thanks very much, but it reflected the over optimistic attitude around the place.

We had two underprepared teams going at it in the opening game of a tour with enormous hype behind it, so it was never going to be pretty.

For the Stormers, some will never get another chance to play New Zealand, so they were right up for it.

The wonderful Deon Fourie played like he was 35 again, while the All Blacks were searching for some sort of cohesion without success, but does it mean anything for the outlook of the first test? Highly unlikely.

Where you cannot make allowances is the lack of attention to the basics. This was evident at scrum time, where Pasilio Tosi pancaked three times when over extended. This is not new for him and it has occurred in domestic rugby. Hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho was pinged twice for not getting his brake foot in place.

Five needless infringements in an area you know the South Africans are going to come after you. This is a genuinely concerning lack of game IQ.

Also in the genuine concerning category is the form of Beauden Barrett, and in particular his decision making.

At the start of the second half, after a poor first 40 minutes, he immediately put his team under pressure by not making the 10-metre mark with the kick-off, and then conceded a weak penalty, which the Stormers kicked for the corner.

He simply makes too many needless errors that put his team under pressure for a man with 144 Test caps. But it did prove that Dave Rennie’s instincts through the Nations Championship Tests were correct, and this once brilliant international career has run its course.

Time has taken away his running game; he no longer takes the ball to the line and doesn’t have the length to win a kicking duel at the top level. If there were any lingering doubts about this call, then his pulling out of two collision situations in this game confirms otherwise.

It’s time to say thanks and close the door on this one, with suitable recognition to follow.

We saw the graduated improvement in the All Blacks first-choice team through to the Ireland game, even if not a complete performance. But here, at the next level down, it is clear there are some messages that are yet to be embedded as habit.

Perhaps the strongest message required is that tempo does not have to equal width.

Tempo means doing everything quickly, pick and go, the little unders lines looking for the space behind the ruck, getting that gain line ruck cleared, every narrow snipe you take, and not simply looking to get outside the tramlines every time you get your hands on the ball.

It took more than one Test to drill this into the starting team through July, but this clarity was not demonstrated against the Stormers, as the ball went through the hands with little purpose repeatedly.

There are a few things, however, that will make Rennie and his coaching team smile.

Fabian Holland showed that 40 minutes against Mid-Canterbury is more than enough to prepare him for the Republic. Anton Segner and Peter Lakai both showed they could play the Luke Jacobson role off the openside if required, although the latter had two horrible defensive reads in Cape Town, with one leading the second try conceded.

The bench provided some bright moments too. Ethan Blackadder has been putting a little extra shoulder into every collision this year and made an immediate impact at offensive ruck time. Sam Darry gave a good account of himself again, but the changes in the halves provided the real impetus.

Under Cortez Ratima and Barrett, New Zealand was aimlessly lateral and setting themselves up as tackling targets, but Kyle Preston and Josh Jacomb both looked to play more direct.

I saw Jacomb with his departing All Black group at Auckland Airport some 10 days ago. He’s a small guy, was eyes down, quickly getting through the airport, and very much looking like the new boy in town.

But he walked out onto the park on Saturday looking confident, like it was where he was supposed to be, and enjoyed a real solid hit out.

The All Blacks side that played the Sharks in Durban overnight was not the side for the first Test, but when named, it did lean heavily that way with a few more combinations in place.

It will be very interesting to see how Coach Rennie approaches these tour matches. Will he focus in on one or two key areas for improvement or, much like South Africa in Argentina last weekend, will we see most of the game plan tucked away safely until the first Test at Ellis Park?

What will be very much front of mind is maintaining discipline, as we have another Englishman on the whistle, but there is no truth to the rumours that the TMO will be seated on a trolley moving up and down the touchline, making it easier to get the referees attention in real time.

While it’s easy to be facetious about the state of refereeing in our game, they are working within a seriously flawed environment.

I am becoming increasingly of the opinion that our game is becoming physically impossible to officiate consistently.

Not just by hemisphere or competition, but even by individuals within the same game. There is simply too much going on.

Twenty-one very specific laws, total rucks and tackles in a single game in the region of 500 single events, and then the breadth of interpretation that varies from competition to competition and referee to referee.

All in a game where the individuals keep getting faster and stronger.

If this was a maths equation you would declare it unsolvable.