How did the All Blacks come to get a penalty on their restart against South Africa? 🤔
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Zig Zag Mauls.
The Springbok's maul tactics are to zig-zag the head of the maul as they move up field.
On Saturday we saw them drive on the zig, angle from the touchline and drive towards the posts. When the momentum stopped, Pieter-Steph du Toit tapped his forward pack to "zag," changing the angle and splintering off, away from the All Black defenders.
They did the same thing with the infamous maul-of-all-mauls against Japan in the World Cup.
Why this is a great tactic because defensively, to stop their momentum you have to drive in the equal and opposite angle. And if you do, they just straighten up, and you have to get your forwards around to rejoin the maul, causing mahem, penalites, and by the time you the Bok pack has advanced 10m.
The All Blacks have clearly seen this as a tactic, and so usually their defensive system is to essentially create an umbrella shape with their forwards from the lineout to channel the momentum of the attacking maul straight.
The trouble with this is it only works if you can get set up before the maul has momentum...
So x2 questions:
1. How do you stop this, once the maul has momentum?
2. How come the All Blacks don't do something like this too? It feels like we always drive straight and loose momentum after like 5m?
100% of credit for this to @SquidgeRugby
I hadn't noticed this until the lads pointed it out in their latest video.