Tony Johnson

There’s work to be done yet, but the All Blacks are in the driver’s seat for the Rugby Championship after the events of Saturday night.

With the Springboks losing in Perth, a New Zealand win in Wellington this weekend will give the All Blacks the chance to wrap up the title in La Plata, ahead of their return clash with South Africa at Ellis Park.

The win in Napier should be put into context – they contained a powerful forward pack that had bossed the Springboks about in two tests and scored the requisite four tries in very tricky conditions. That’s a good night’s work.

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What will be encouraging for the management will be the way the team handled the changes in personnel both before and during the game, Beauden Barrett might have had a rare off night with the boot, but his general play was outstanding, producing an array of tactical kicks into space…the first of which should have produced a greater result but the referees failed to take note of an early tackle on the flying Julian Savea.

He passed well – the no-look delivery to put Savea through for his second half try was a thing of beauty, and when he ran he used his exceptional pace to telling effect.

It was just a shame to see him taken off so soon – you just hope that hasn’t dented his confidence.

An unsung hero would be Jeremy Thrush for the way he slotted into the team following Sam Whitelock’s injury, doing all his core work and complimenting another astonishing performance by Brodie Retallick.

And Sam Cane was also impressive coming on for Liam Messam. Cane has his critics, but he has produced some good moments in this series, most notably his game saving steal-penalty in Sydney.

Now we hear Whitelock and Messam are out for possibly the rest of the series, but you get the feeling that’s not going to concern the coaches too much.

The 2011 World Cup win was heavily built on a mantra of “expect the unexpected and deal with it” – .in other words things are going to go wrong and we need to be prepared for that.

Remember this team is unbeaten this year despite being without Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Dan Carter, Aaron Cruden, Jerome Kaino and Tony Woodcock at various times, and now Whitelock and Messam….it’s all good practice for what might Happen next year.

The Springboks will kick themselves all the way from Perth to Wellington after blowing a winning position in their first clash with the Wallabies.

It is true they copped a very rough decision with the yellow carding of Bryan Habana. From one angle it did appear that the initial contact was around the top of the shoulder-neck area, but even so a yellow was a massive call.

Jean de Villiers quite rightly pointed out that a few minutes early he had taken an almost identical shot and it was only a penalty – so there’s no way both decisions could be right.

However the Springboks still had a chance to hold out against a muddling Aussie attack, and would have done so had Morne Steyn put a penalty clearance into touch – that was as much responsible for the result as George Clancy’s pedantic refereeing.

The Springboks will bring their usual extreme physical challenge, and their innate capacity for cashing in on opposition teams mistakes, but there is justifiable concern in the Republic right now about the way they are playing.

Steyn may have committed the biggest blunder, but their kicking out of hand was generally awful, with Ruan Pienaar showing none of acumen of the injured Fourie du Preez in kicking to apply pressure.

Heyneke Meyer could do worse than throw the young wunderkind Handre Pollard into the fray to change things up and challenge the All Black defence with something other than kick or crash, but that seems highly unlikely.

Argentina could also do with a bit more adventure in their play.

They must have sensed an opportunity when the weather went dog in Napier, but with the All Blacks largely neutralising their forward strength they didn’t have a lot else to offer.

That shouldn’t be the case. They chose a safety first approach with their selection, leaving out the powerful winger Manuel Montero who had been a real handful against the Boks.

You still sense that they are really not that confident against the big powers, especially away from home, and their default setting is more to try and spoil than create.

There is plenty of talent and class; they just need the confidence to use it a bit more.

They should be able to gain an edge against the Wallabies up front, especially with the Aussies over using James Slipper to carry the ball to the detriment of his performance in the scrum.

Finally it is quite obvious rugby has a global problem with the refereeing.

A ref can be forgiven for a mistake at a ruck or scrum because the laws are just so convoluted, but when guys are making mistakes that are so basic as the ones we saw at the weekend then something is really wrong.

There’s no quick fix, but better communication with and greater vigilance by the assistants and better use of the technology would be a start.

Otherwise next year’s World Cup could get very ugly.