Springboks limp into New Zealand to face rampant All Blacks on a 43-match home winning streak

The Springboks have seldom limped into New Zealand to take on the All Blacks in worse shape then they are currently in and things might just get worse because the world champions are not happy with their own form.

The Boks meet the All Blacks in Christchurch on Saturday in their first encounter since the 2015 World Cup semi-final at Twickenham. After losing 23-17 to a struggling Australia last Saturday‚ which came after a 26-24 defeat against Argentina in their previous match‚ the Boks now meet the world champions in rampant mood. New Zealand are on a 15-match winning streak – and a 43-match home winning streak.

They’ve amassed a maximum 15 points from their opening three Rugby Championship matches and have scored 18 tries in beating the Wallabies twice and the Pumas once.

Oh‚ and they haven’t lost in Christchurch since 1998. The gulf between the All Blacks and the rest is as wide as the Tasman Sea.

Despite two defeats‚ SA are second on the standings on six points – nine adrift of NZ at the halfway mark in the tournament. It’s hard to recall when last the Boks arrived in NZ in worse shape.

In 2006 they flew into Wellington after a 49-0 thrashing in Brisbane and in 2003 they came to Dunedin after losing 52-16 in Pretoria. But both those All Black sides‚ while good‚ were not at the same level as the class of 2016. Argentina were expected to pose the All Blacks their toughest questions of the season last weekend after outplaying the Boks in their opening two matches of the Championship.

And they managed to do that for periods during the match. But the All Blacks are not easily knocked off kilter and a try-splurge in the final 20 minutes turned a 25-22 lead into a 57-22 thrashing for the Pumas in Hamilton.

 No team is as ruthless as the All Blacks and none are as capable of playing for the full 80 minutes at such tempo. It’s easy to forget that the Boks are very much a work in progress‚ under a new coach and with a swathe of new players. But that just serves to underline how messy the situation in South African rugby is at the moment because the All Blacks are also in a massive rebuilding phase. They lost Richie McCaw‚ Dan Carter‚ Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith between last season and this.

That quartet had over 500 Test caps between them and were the spine of the team.

Yet‚ nearly a year on from winning the World Cup‚ the All Blacks are purring along as if they jettisoned four journeymen. South Africa only builds from World Cup to the next – NZ takes a longer view and therefore the likes of Sam Cane‚ Beauden Barrett‚ Ryan Crotty and Malakai Fekitoa have stepped into the breach as seasoned internationals in 2016. And the All Blacks continue to surge ahead of the chasing pack because they are their own hardest critics.

Despite their success‚ they review each match as if they lost it. Flank Jerome Kaino revealed that they hardly looked at the last 25 minutes of the Pumas match in their Monday review – all their focus was on the opening 50-55 minutes when they were under pressure. Lineouts were below par and they weren’t physical enough at the breakdowns were the two dominant themes that emerged from their review.

And the post-mortem is led by the senior player’s group.

Coach Steve Hansen stays out of it. "If the coaches have to tell you this is where you have to improve before you point it out there's something wrong‚” Kaino told the media.

"We pointed out [mistakes] before the coaches. As leaders we take it personally‚ we take it on ourselves to initiate that. The coaches give us guidance on how we can improve.

"We know it wasn't a true reflection of how tough that match was and how much pressure we were under‚" he said. "We took the scoreboard out of it and the result and really drilled down into those periods when we were under pressure and how we could do better in those areas.” It’s the talk of champions.