A late flurry of tries helped the All Blacks to a unconvincing 38-21 victory over the Stormers at Cape Town Stadium on Friday night.
They got the result in the bag, but Dave Rennie and co will look back at this performance and think how their charges were so horribly outplayed by the hosts.
Granted this is not the Test team that’ll front the Springboks, but side put out for this match looked disjointed, sloppy and were physically inferior to the Stormers, whose players were superb by all accounts.
The 40-year-old Deon Fourie was the leader of the pack and emerged as arguably the best player on the field. Yaqeen Ahmed didn’t take a backward step and held his own against his more accomplished opponent Beauden Barrett.
Andre-Hugo Venter was another who stood out after an early missed tackle, while outside backs Warrick Gelant and Seabelo Senatla performed equally well against New Zealand’s lethal back three.
One big takeaway from this encounter is that the All Blacks have a lot of work to do ahead of their mid-week game against the Sharks in Durban on Tuesday.
FIRST HALF RECAP
As expected, the All Blacks made a bright start to their seven-week South African excursion, but the Stormers to their credit settled well into the game once they got over initial jitters – or butterflies, depending how you look at it – and actually emerged as the more physically dominant side.
The Cape side suffered an early injury-enforced setback when scrumhalf Imad Khan had to be replaced by Dewaldt Duvenhage after the former freakishly pulled up with an injury without being touch.
New Zealand would be first on the scoreboard through hooker Samisoni Taukei’aho with Beauden Barrett converting. But their stay in front didn’t last long as the Stormers hit back after wrestling back the momentum. They exerted dominance at scrum by winning the first penalty at that set-piece.
Two quick penalties and a yellow card to All Black Anton Lienert-Brown later, veteran Deon Fourie went on a surging run to get them inside the 22. The pressure eventually took its toll on the strained All Blacks defence as Andre-Hugo Venter crashed over from the back of a driving maul. But the five-pointer was chalked off for obstruction by Evan Roos. It made little to no difference, though, as Fourie powered over and Yaqeen Ahmed converted to level the scores.
With the exception of a few individual errors, the Stormers were by and large the better side for the remainder of the first half. But as is customary with All Blacks, they struck right before the break to take – one could say undeserving – lead at the break.
SECOND HALF RECAP
If New Zealand’s sloppy first half display was cause for concern, their dire second half showing should sound alarm bells. Yes they won the game, but it has to be said that their get-out-of-jail-free card was more because the Stormers ran out of steam.
The Stormers bossed possession and territory after the restart, but the All Blacks defence forced to take hit after hit. They couldn’t successfully absorb all that pressure and their line was carved open when Seabelo Senatla sliced through to score a stunning solo effort to draw the Stormers level.
The Stormers continued to take the fight to the All Blacks, but a couple of handling errors were all the visitors needed to open up that pressure valve.
They scored a flurry of tries – four to be exact – in the last 10 minutes or so to ultimately take the game away from the Stormers.
SCORERS
Stormers
Tries: Deon Fourie, Seabelo Senatla
Conversions: Yaqeen Ahmed (2)
All Blacks
Tries: Samisoni Taukei’aho, Simon Parker, Rieko Ioane, Leroy Carter, Josh Moorby, Asafo Aumua
Conversions: Beauden Barrett (3), Josh Jacomb
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