Head coach Dave Rennie admitted his All Blacks players were made to sweat by a spirited Lions outfit before edging a thrilling 41-35 win at Ellis Park on Tuesday night.
New Zealand trailed at the break 21-17 and were again under pressure early in the second half, only to rally and complete a clean sweep of South Africa’s URC clubs in the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour.
“The Lions got off to a flyer at the start of both halves,” Rennie said after the final whistle in Johannesburg. “Our boys showed a lot of character to fight our way back into it.
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“We created so many opportunities. If you look at the numbers, we dominated defenders beaten, linebreaks, offloads and so on, but we just didn’t do the obvious thing enough.
“At times we threw a miss-pass when just going through the hands, sitting defenders down and picking them off would have done it.
“You’ve got to give credit to the Lions. They came to play tonight; they got off to a good start, got the crowd into the game and at 35-17 we were under a bit of heat.
“So I was pleased with the composure and our ability to grind out that last 30 minutes or so to finish in front.”
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On the balance between patience and ambition, Rennie said it was mixed: “At times we tried to play too much.
“There was a lot of space to kick that would have put them under plenty of pressure, where they’d probably hack it back to us and give us a chance to counter. They certainly kicked a lot more than us and benefited from that.”
Fielding a mix of capped campaigners and players with only a handful of Tests behind them, Rennie called the midweek win invaluable for the Kiwis’ growth.
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“It’s awesome, and they’re going to learn a lot from that,” he said, adding that having to dig deep would serve the youngsters well.
Looking to Saturday’s rematch with the Springboks in Cape Town, Rennie felt the Lions’ edge defence had been “softer” than what awaits his men against the world champions.
“The Springboks will come hard at us, so we felt we had to play on top of the Lions a lot more,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk down the performance of the Lions. I thought they were excellent tonight and they made us work very hard.”
Photo: Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images
