New Zealand over the past month have been barely recognisable from the team the Springboks and then France thoroughly vanquished before and at the start of the Rugby World Cup respectively.
They've gone on an admirable restoration job in keeping with their reputation of playing with greater cohesion and precision in their last five matches. The old swagger is back.
The area in which the Springboks' opponents in Saturday's dream 2023 Rugby World Cup final at Stade de France (9pm) have shown the most improvement, and which has perhaps allowed them to play with more thrust in attack and sturdiness in defence, is the ruck.
“Their ruck has been excellent,” noted Springbok assistant coach Felix Jones. “They do appear to be a very complete team. There has been development in their kicking game. The way they put you under pressure not only with their passing game and their ability to use the ball off their foot.”
Unsurprisingly they have several tournament-leading stats, including red-zone efficiency, (3.89 points per entry) combined with the third-most entries per game (12.7).
It has allowed winger Will Jordan to shine. Jordan is the tournament's leading try-scorer with eight and could set a tournament record should he get one in the final. He has made the most metres for New Zealand (582) and has made the most line-breaks (12).
Mark Telea has beaten the most defenders in the tournament, while Richie Mo’unga and Anton Lienert-Brown lead the tournament for passes leading to line-breaks.
Without the ball they've worked hard too with Ardie Savea and Sam Cane jointly making the most tackles, while the latter has made the tournament's most dominant tackles.
The Boks have been less efficient at the ruck.
In the defeat against Ireland in the pool stages of the competition the Springboks did not boss the collision and were perhaps not as assertive as they can be at the breakdown.
Jasper Wiese started against Ireland but the introduction of the vastly experienced Duane Vermeulen has brought more steeliness to their back row.
The Boks in their last two matches, and perhaps understandably because of their guillotine nature, have played tighter. The conditions at the wet Stade de France in their semifinal against England gave them cause to apply the hand brake.
That is reflected in the match statistics.
They moved their play in much tighter to the breakdown, with no plays further than 30m and 63% played within 10m compared with their tournament average of 45%.
They were bossed by England in the first half and their ruck speed was their second-slowest of the competition.
They made the same number of red zone entries as England. They got within a sniff of the try line eight times in total — the fewest they have had in any game at this of tournament.
The stats also reveal the fewest carries, metres made, line-breaks and offloads of their whole competition. In only one other match did they beat fewer defenders.
They lost four line-outs to England’s three but had nearly twice as many throws so had a better success rate and had more platforms to launch from overall.
The Bok scrum has found proper traction. They repeated their 100% success rate of the quarterfinal against France in the clash against England.
The statistics they returned in the semifinal, however, are perhaps clouded by the conditions.
New Zealand operated on a dry surface in their semifinal against Argentina.
It is still not clear whether they'll play on a wet surface again on Saturday. Either way the Boks are likely to play tighter than they did in the pool stages. They will try to do a strangle job on an All Blacks team keen to explore Stade de France's wide open spaces.
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