Photo via BBC Sport

Boks power & All Blacks of old - what did we learn from series?

South Africa relied on their seasoned forward muscle to counter New Zealand and avert an echo of the 1996 tour outcome, leaning on scrum dominance and an imposing maul finished by Malcolm Marx under the uprights following an earlier penalty try, with their brute force continuing to tell in Baltimore. Even with attack specialist Tony Brown joining the coaching staff in 2024 prior to his scheduled 2028 move to the All Blacks, and playmaker Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu recovering from a late-May ailment to feature in the starting fifteen across all four encounters after Handre Pollard pulled out of game two, head coach Rassie Erasmus continued to lean on established stalwarts such as Marx, Eben Etzebeth, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi, Damian de Allende, and Cheslin Kolbe.

New Zealand, having removed Scott Robertson in January following a two-season tenure, responded under Dave Rennie by deploying Hurricanes pairing Cam Roigard and Ruben Love to revive their trademark counter-attacking identity. The visitors breached the whitewash at least four times in every contest on South African soil, notably unsettling expectations with a 33-16 triumph at Ellis Park and remaining deadlocked at the interval during the third clash, though the Springboks ultimately countered the expansive style by leaning into the forward strength that previously earned them consecutive global trophies.