Former Bok legend surprised at All Blacks' set-piece capitulation

Rassie Erasmus' men claimed a 3-1 series victory over New Zealand in Rugby's Greatest Rivalry, with the triumph based on scrum, lineout, maul and kicking.

They outplayed Dave Rennie's side in all those areas, with the All Blacks looking to move the ball whenever they had the opportunity.

While the best Kiwi teams in the past have always looked to be adventurous with ball in hand, they have also had a strong front five which could match the best in the world.

The New Zealanders also had the ability to turn an opposition's perceived strength into a weakness, but they somewhat ran away from that set-piece fight against the Boks.

"It's one of the things that was a surprise to me and you can maybe look at the history of where our two teams are, from a provincial point of view or franchise point of view," Smit said on the I Love Rugby podcast, featuring Wallabies and All Blacks greats George Gregan and Andrew Mehrtens respectively.

"The All Blacks were surprising to me, every ball they had was channel one, they didn't want to give the Boks too many scrum feeds, which they were good at."

New Zealand were better up front in the final Test but, for the majority of the series, they failed to cope with the power and technique of the Springbok scrum.

"It's a ferocious scrum and it has been building and getting better and better, and they put a lot of work into it," Smit said.

"Truth be told, we've got Ox [Nche] on the one side, we've got Malcolm [Marx] in the middle and then we've got Wilco Louw at 140-odd kgs; you add a little bit of work and technique to that, it gets hard to stop.

"I've been giving this a lot of thought around the dominance, for me the surprise was the All Blacks wanted to get away from the scrum [and lineout] as much as possible; the quick throws to the prop at the front of the lineout."

Smit duly believes that South Africa's exit from Super Rugby has had a negative impact on the All Blacks.

While many of the Springbok players are in competitions where the scrum is more valued, those based in New Zealand and Australia are playing the same type of ball-in-hand style every week.

"We get tested in the Investec Champions Cup against some of the best scrums, we get tested in the URC, so the scrum and the kicking game has remained of massive importance in the competitions that we're playing," the ex-Boks skipper said.

"Super Rugby is still such an exciting tournament to win but there's not a huge emphasis on kicking tactics and set-piece; it's more about playing the All Black way.

"There are not a huge amount of teams that are going to really scare you from a scrum point of view and that's a difficult one to fix.

"I think the All Blacks have got the personnel but scrumming is like a UFC fighter. You can train in the gym as much as you want, but if you don't put enough time in the ring and you don't scrum every week, and you don't get tested by hard opposition, it's very difficult to understand what the level is."

He added: "It's sad, we all played in Super Rugby and I still think that's the greatest tournament that's ever lived, but I think the exit for us has probably been less traumatic because we've gone over to a competition that is a little easier from a travel perspective but it's also tested us in different conditions.

"The seasons differ, the conditions differ, the fields differ – there are some artificial pitches – and we've got teams that want to engage up front and, if you don't have a kicking game and a kick receive game, you're going to come up short."