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Sir Steve Hansen: Springboks have exposed two All Blacks’ weaknesses that Dave Rennie has to fix before the World Cup Sir Steve Hansen says that Dave Rennie must address two areas of the All Blacks game before next year’s Rugby World Cup. New Zealand and South Africa are on a collision course for the quarter-finals, and the legendary former head coach believes that the All Blacks must sort out their set-pieces before touching down in Australia. Still, Hansen was greatly impressed by the performances of Rennie’s side during the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Test matches in South Africa as they managed to defeat the Springboks in the opener at Ellis Park before falling to narrow defeats in Cape Town and Soweto. Sir Steve Hansen: The Springboks did what the Springboks do The 67-year-old aired his concerns after praising both nations for producing a fantastic game in the third Test match at the FNB Stadium. “A wonderful game of footy,” Hansen remarked on the Rugby Unity podcast. “The Springboks did what the Springboks do. Their scrum and maul were unstoppable, but two missed tackles on their midfielders by Leroy Carter, and that was 14 points or thereabouts, and that’s the game. That’s how close they’ve been. “I think the first game was the biggest margin, and the next two have only been seven or less. There’s not much in it, but you’ve got to make sure that you go for the whole 80 minutes, and if you don’t, you’re going to get second.” While the All Blacks were incredibly competitive in the third Test match, they were forced to chase the game in the final quarter as they trailed the Boks by 12 points. However, Rennie’s side struggled to really fire a shot until the final play of the game. What the All Blacks need to fix the set-pieces Hansen believes that was partly down to their set-piece struggles, with South Africa getting the upper hand in the scrums while the All Blacks resorted to throwing to the front of the lineout because of how the Boks were competing. “You’re not going to beat the Boks until you can get parity at scrum time and you can get decent ball in the lineout,” he said. “A lot of the time, we were having to go to the front, and it was messy or ugly, and you’re letting them get a free shot from the back with their defensive system the way it is.” Dave Rennie’s verdict on Ruben Love’s yellow card: ‘It’s definitely a penalty’ Those two facets of the game need to be fixed before the World Cup according to the ex-head coach, who is backing Rennie and his staff to get it done. “So, you’ve really got to try and win the ball at the back [of the lineout], and we’ve got until next year’s World Cup to get these things right, and I think we will. Once we do that, then we’re right on the hunt,” he added. Speaking to the media on Monday, Rennie addressed the set-piece issues, stating that the All Blacks and World Rugby are still at loggerheads over the scrums while the team was focused on simply retaining possession from lineouts. Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for world-class coverage you can trust. “Lineout-wise, we’re just trying to play tempo, and ideally we’d like to play it off the middle or off the back, but thinking is we’ll take it where we can, and the way South Africa were defending the middle and back, and not necessarily mirroring in defence but just going off our thrower – it’s free ball at the front,” he said. “So we’re prepared to take it just to get the ball on our hands and get a bit of continuity.”