Rugby Championship R5 takeaways: All Blacks fighting alarming final-quarter issue

Rugby

Meanwhile, the All Blacks survived a stirring Wallabies comeback in Sydney to claim their second win of the tournament.

Read on as we review some of the key takeaways from the weekend.

If you flicked off the TV after 15 minutes of Bledisloe I, and then came back an hour later, it would have been one almighty shock to find the Wallabies trailing the All Blacks by only three points as the clock approached 80 minutes.

For earlier in the Accor Stadium contest New Zealand had built a 21-0, and then 28-7, lead, and appeared set to hand Australia a second consecutive Rugby Championship thrashing.

But as has been the case throughout this tournament, the All Blacks fell into an incredible second-half hole and could only add three points to their halftime total.

For the fifth straight match in this competition, New Zealand failed to add any points in the final quarter and yet again saw their discipline and finishing drop off considerably.

While they were twice, correctly, denied second-half tries by the Television Match Official, the All Blacks also butchered two further gilt-edged opportunities, the worst of which was a Damian McKenzie flick pass that asked too much of the supporting Tamaiti Williams eight minutes into the second stanza.

“We’ve talked, we’ve had more meetings than Saatchi and Saatchi, it feels like around the actual opportunity to see them [the attacking chances], now how we’re going to finish them,” Robertson said Sunday.

“They’ve fronted up, and you don’t want to take any negative tension around that, you want to show that this is it, boys, train it, now give it. So it’s been there, it’s just got to click.”

With those opportunities spurned, the All Blacks were forced to scramble desperately inside the final 15 minutes as the Wallabies scored two tries. The visitors were meanwhile reduced to 13 men for three minutes following yellow cards to Anton Lienert-Brown and then Caleb Clarke – making it the second straight Test New Zealand had seen two players sin-binned.

“Very disappointed, a big focus for us was our discipline, especially when you get on your own line and defend for a long period of time, that’s one place that we wanted to clean up,” Robertson said.

“Obviously against the Boks it was one area that they targeted us and we needed to be cleaner [in Sydney] – it wasn’t good enough tonight, so we’ll assess it again. It’s a focus for us, yes.”

While the All Blacks have been haunted by the “Capital Curse” in Wellington, and they will be without vice-captain Jordie Barrett who is waiting on scans for a medial ligament injury, New Zealand will still be heavy favourites to complete a clean sweep of the Bledisloe this weekend.

But with far sterner challenges against England, Ireland and France ahead on their spring tour, Robertson will want to see improvement across the board as the All Blacks are still to put in a convincing 80-minute performance this year.

LIBBOK LAMENT AS PLAYMAKER’S GOAL-KICKING WOES REAR THEIR HEAD ONCE MORE

South Africa’s push for an undefeated Rugby Championship came to a devastating halt in Argentina at the weekend, as the world champions saw an early 17-0 lead become a 26-22 deficit by halftime.

In what proved a gripping Test match in Santiago del Estero, neither team could add to their three first-half tries thereafter with the match instead coming down to the boot of Tomas Albornoz, Handre Pollard and Manie Libbok.

Albornoz kicked the Pumas back in front with 12 minutes to play, after Pollard and Libbok had each struck a penalty to put the Springboks clear. But just as it looked like the hosts were set to complete an historic win, referee Christophe Ridley pinged Pumas replacement scrum-half Tomas Garcia for not rolling away at the tackle in the 79th minute.

Up then stepped Libbok to kick his side to victory from just to the right of the posts, 35 metres out. Unfortunately for the replacement No. 10, who was playing just his second match of the tournament, he pulled the shot to the left of the posts and while there was still time to run for a restart, Argentina’s defence held strong to eventually win a penalty of their own from which they kicked the ball into touch to bring about fulltime.

Earlier in the second half, Libbok had also kicked the ball dead when trying to set up a lineout drive in the left-hand corner from another Springboks penalty.

This is not the first time that Libbok’s goal-kicking has come into focus, with the fly-half also missing several important shots in the Springboks’ pool-play loss to Ireland at last year’s World Cup.

While that result did not ultimately derail South Africa’s successful pursuit of back-to-back Webb Ellis crowns, and Libbok did eventually start in both the knockout wins over France and England respectively, he was hooked in the semifinal after just 34 minutes and replaced by Pollard, who had been called into the squad earlier in the tournament following an injury to Malcolm Marx.

Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus did his best to shield Libbok from the inevitable criticism after Saturday’s late miss, but there is no hiding from the fact that this was a kick that should have been made.

“Not just for us to win the game, but for him personally, I was really hoping that he kicked that kick,” Erasmus said. “He has been kicking well this whole week and kicked so well in the warm-up. He slotted everything, but that’s pressure.

“I don’t think the game should have come down to the wire, with one man kicking it over. There were lots of opportunities where we lost the ball in lineouts, giving away penalties in their 22.

“It was not a great display by us. Manie is going to get a lot of flak, we all know that. He must find a way to manage that. I am sure we will all get a lot of flak for him missing that kick. But it shouldn’t have been on the last kick for us to win. We should have done it much earlier.”

With Libbok having already slipped down the Springboks pecking order behind rising star Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, and Pollard long-established as a world-class 10, Libbok’s own international career is at risk of stalling before it has really even begun.

Meanwhile, utility Damian Willemse is also firming for a return on South Africa’s end-of-year tour.

ARGENTINA FULLY DESERVING OF THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY

It may have required Libbok to fluff a 79th-minute sitter, but few people will argue that Argentina still weren’t deserving of their drought-breaking win over the Springboks – a result that secured their place in history as only the third nation and fifth team ever to beat each of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand in the same calendar year.

The gripping 29-28 triumph was made all the more impressive by the fact the Pumas conceded an early 17-0 lead, before the hosts steadied and flexed their own attacking skill to dominate the back half of the first stanza.

And that has been the biggest improvement in this Pumas team under new coach Felipe Contepomi; while they were defensively tough and dogged at the breakdown under Michael Cheika, the former Test No. 10 has added a devastating attacking edge to their play which has seen them pile on a Rugby Championship-high 163 points in five games.

Contempomi has two quality No. 10s at his disposal in Santiago Carreras and Tomas Albornoz, while Santiago Chocabares and Mateo Carreras have proven themselves as superb creators and finishers respectively further along the backline.

The one-point win also moved Argentina up to sixth on World Rugby’s Test rankings; if they can continue their superb Rugby Championship form up north later in the year, then there will be little doubt they deserve to be considered among the game’s elite international nations.

What hasn’t pleased Argentina administrators, nor their fans, however, is the plan from New Zealand Rugby and SA Rugby to stage extended tours in 2026 and 2020, effectively rendering the Rugby Championship as a second-rate event in those two years.

Whether the Pumas and Wallabies look to a similar plan to ensure they do not lose out on any key Test-match preparation remains to be seen, but there is no doubting the level of quality Argentina have brought to the tournament this year – and the strides that Contepomi has made in doing so.

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