There's growing speculation the Springboks are planning to leave the Rugby Championship in 2025 and join the Six Nations. Gregor Paul reports on what that would mean for the All Blacks - and how we got here.
This is maybe it, the last All Blacks tour of South Africa as part of the Rugby Championship.
This is maybe the Southern Hemisphere entering its last throes before the inevitable commercial and population power of Europe pulls the Springboks into the Six Nations and Europe becomes rugby's Death Star, equipped with a traction force that will suck players, fans, sponsors and broadcasters from all over the globe into its orbit.
Such predictions have been made before of course. The South Africa Rugby Union (SARU) have previously made several veiled threats to quit the Sanzaar alliance and throw their chips in with the Six Nations.
But the prospect has never been real. South African rugby executives in the past have been happy to sporadically let this idea run loose in the media as this is the nature of Sanzaar politics.
It runs on the power of agendas and perceived leverage. The partners like to posture, pretend they are ready to take extreme positions to extract a compromise or concession.
Whatever has been said by South Africa or previously believed, they have never seriously contemplated walking out of the Rugby Championship. And nor, previously, have they had even a remote hope of being invited into the Six Nations.
That all changed on the back of four specific acts - the first of which happened in 2018 when, after agreeing to reduce their Super Rugby presence from six teams to four, the South African Rugby Union negotiated for the discarded two (Cheetahs and Southern Kings) to enter the European Pro14 which featured provinces from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy.
There were, quite suddenly, real links with Europe rather than just vague, aspirational noises about one day aligning.
The second and third factors that dramatically changed the landscape were connected. The pandemic hit in early 2020 and with New Zealand's government suggesting that the international border would likely be closed for up to two years and hard quarantine measures in place, Super Rugby, as it was - a 15-team competition featuring five clubs from New Zealand, five from Australia, four from South Africa and the Jaguares from Argentina - had to be suspended.
In the hiatus, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) sniffed an opportunity to take control and reshape Southern Hemisphere rugby to its own masterplan.
Commercially, NZR didn't feel that the presence of South African teams worked: too many of their best players had moved to Japan or Europe and their teams had low appeal to New Zealand fans, made worse by the fact games in the Republic typically kicked off in the dead of the Oceania night.
There was also a growing belief in the NZR boardroom that if Super Rugby had a single owner, it would become more attractive to private equity investors.
In July 2020, the national body declared it would run a new format with eight to 10 teams, likely five from New Zealand, one, or possibly two from the Pacific Islands, and a maximum of three from Australia.
South Africa no longer featured in the plan. It was a tactical failure by NZR chair Brent Impey as South Africa were most likely going to kick themselves out of Super Rugby.
They didn't need to be pushed so NZR became the instant bad guy, accused of unilaterally blowing up the competition which made it easy for SARU to reject an approach to be involved in some kind of playoff series between their respective champions.
"I see we are being deemed as having been kicked out of Super Rugby," SARU chief executive Jourie Roux would say in September, 2020. "If anything, New Zealand kicked themselves out of it.
"The market has corrected itself, and that was due anyway. In terms of pay-TV and structures around broadcasting, and the way we consume rugby, a change was due, and we will undergo that change now due to Covid," Roux said.
"I wouldn't be doing my job not to look at plan B or plan C. I've been doing that for a long time and there are a few options on the table."
Plan B for SARU was to add its four discarded Super Rugby teams – Bulls, Sharks, Stormers and Lions – to the Pro14, which is now called the United Rugby Championship (URC), and to commit to the Boks playing in the Rugby Championship until the end of 2025.
But that commitment being seen through became yet more tenuous on account of the fourth major change in the wider rugby ecosystem - which was the arrival of private equity firm CVC as a stakeholder in the Six Nations.
In March 2021, the investment firm paid $750m for a 14.3 per cent share of the commercial assets of the Six Nations.
CVC has come on board to grow the financial footprint and fan appeal of the competition.
More importantly, however, the arrival of CVC has brought a fresh and powerful voice to the notoriously conservative and at times politically self-interested Six Nations and if the door was previously always shut to South Africa, it no longer is, despite reassurances of change not being on the agenda.
"Our current focus is the July and November windows and how we can improve them," Six Nations chief executive Ben Morel said late last year. "We believe it could be a great platform for all countries to create global growth for the game.
"It's not a question of what I'd like. South Africa is committed to the Rugby Championship. The Six Nations have added and reduced its teams very few times in its 140 years, so it's something we'd be very cautious about doing."
With South African clubs integrated into European competition, a strained relationship between SARU and NZR and an ambitious external investor in the Six Nations, it would be naïve in the extreme to rule out the Springboks quitting the Rugby Championship.
The days of empty threats are over - this time the prospect of a Southern Hemisphere break-up on an epic scale is worryingly real.
And the loss of South Africa from Super Rugby is already starting to hurt New Zealand and impact the All Blacks' ability to compete on the international stage.
How the Super Rugby break-up is hurting New Zealand
There were moments in the second test between the All Blacks and Ireland in Dunedin when young backs Quinn Tupaea and Leicester Fainga'anuku couldn't keep the ball.
They both had sketchy games. Coughed up possession more than they normally would, made panicked decisions under pressure and couldn't impose themselves physically.
There were plenty of astute rugby analysts who felt these two promising young players struggled because they have rarely in their careers to date been exposed to the game's genuine power athletes.
And that's because neither Fainga'anuku nor Tupaea were Super Rugby regulars in the pre-Covid age - and neither of them have had prolonged exposure to the sheer brute force and relentless physical approach that the South African teams used to bring.
They were found a little wanting on the night when confronted with big men who hit collisions with exceptional force and it would appear to be increasingly true that the reworking of Super Rugby into a trans-Pacific format may have enhanced the competition commercially - or at least lowered its cost base to a sustainable level - but it has hurt New Zealand from a high performance aspect.
In Mbombela, All Blacks prop Ethan de Groot, another with no exposure to South African teams, was sent flying out the back of a ruck as he tried to clean it out. He then, almost comedically, tries to pull someone and ended up flying out the back again.
He's a big, strong New Zealander, but he simply couldn't move those bigger South African athletes. He just didn't know how because he's never had to do it before.
Super Rugby Pacific is fast and dynamic, but it's missing an element of raw brutality. All 12 teams have core similarities in how they play: it's mostly ruck and run, use the set-piece to restart the game and get the ball wide quickly.
It's entertaining but it's a long way removed from the reality of test football where the best teams - France, Ireland and South Africa - are building bigger athletes, focusing hard on the set-piece as a means to exert pressure and perfecting the art of the collision and cleanout.
There have been, quite obviously, several problems that have beset the All Blacks in the last two years, but one continual failing has been their inability to handle power teams.
Since South African teams departed Super Rugby, the All Blacks have suffered three losses to Ireland, one to France, one to Argentina and two to the Springboks, which best tells the story of how much the split is hurting the game in New Zealand.
The evidence is writ large - New Zealand's best players are not enjoying a varied diet in Super Rugby and it's leaving them underprepared when they jump to the next level.
"Super Rugby is certainly different these days to pre-Covid," says All Blacks captain Sam Cane. "That is just the reality of it unfortunately. But I think if you speak to any of the Kiwi boys, we always enjoy playing the South Africans to test ourselves physically. Although we pride ourselves on playing skilfully, it's a component of our game, the physical side, a lot of guys love and relish as well."
But as has been evident since the back half of 2021 and was painfully apparent in the first test of the 2022 series against the Springboks, the All Blacks are not coping with the raised physicality of modern test rugby.
In Mbombela, it was the breakdown where they were outclassed and effectively where the test was lost, with Aaron Smith putting it like this: "What went wrong was our ability to build pressure with the ball.
"We were missing our cleanouts, they were just too good on the ball and then we had a couple of opportunities to break them and we couldn't get it done.
"Their ability to soak the tackle and get on the ball really quickly was what they were really good at, at certain times."
What also is now missing from the Super Rugby diet is the need to do long haul travel and get used to playing in unfamiliar and significantly different environments.
In 2018, when research was being undertaken about the possible future shape of Super Rugby, New Zealand's players were unanimous that, despite the travel burden, they saw playing in South Africa as critical to their development.
As a sign of South Africa's importance, NZR signed off on a New Zealand under-19 team touring there later this year to give a cohort of potential Super Rugby players a taste of playing in the Republic.
"Having to tour is a major part of player development and Super Rugby delivered that," says Rugby Players' Association boss Rob Nichol.
"It's a real shame that for whatever reason we have not been able to continue that. They (the players) love playing different teams in different countries and they particularly enjoy the challenge of playing in South Africa and the camaraderie.
"Maybe for an older, more experienced player who has been there many times, it doesn't have the same appeal, but they appreciate the importance of going there in their development."
The prospect of rebuilding a new Super Rugby venture that includes South African teams is almost nil, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that there has to be some means to create more contact with South Africa at provincial level.
New Zealand's players aren't being exposed to big enough athletes who relish the set-piece and collision.
"Personally, do I miss playing South Africa [in Super Rugby], yes I do," says All Blacks coach Ian Foster.
"I think it is great for us. I keep coming back to the fact that there is different styles and a great rivalry, intensity, they are the things that you want to hone your players to get them to become better and better," Foster said.
"Clearly Covid has changed a heck of a lot these past two or three years and countries have made different decisions.
"What I will say categorically is that I think it is vital for New Zealand and South Africa to stay tight in their rugby relationship. There is so much legacy and history in this relationship that we have to make sure we keep it strong and our job as coaches and players is to make sure we do that legacy proud by the way both teams play."
