THE SECOND TEST.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 172, 23 July 1928, Page 6

THE SECOND TEST.

Not many people in New Zealand «.*xpt"ct<•«! the All Blacks to win .Saturday's Test match. The South Africans themselves considered that the team playing for them in the second lest was stronger than the team that won the first, and the conditions of play ut Johannes- I burg were supposed to he' comparatively uniavourable to the tourists. It was therefore confidently expected in South Africa that the All Blacks would be beaten again, and even their most fervent admirers here would hardly have described themselves as confident rather than hopeful. A victory w r on under such circumstances is very creditable to our representatives. They have not only retrieved their reputation as footballers, but they have shown themselves capable of resisting- and overcoming that fatal "inferiority complex" which so often overwhelms a defeated or disappointed team. As to the actual character of the victory, the margin was certainly a small one. But it must not be forgotten that in the first Test, in spite of the large score, the Springboks crossed the All Black line onlv once. To explain their change of fortune, all we need assume is that the Xew Zealanders, profiting by their defeats, have succeeded in adjusting themselves to their opponents' methods, and are now playing a game more likely to beat the Springboks than the form of football to which we have been accustomed here in recent years. It must be remembered that at the beginning of the tour New Zealand gave way on the interpretation of the rules to such an extent as to handicap the team considerably, especially in the opening ma'tches. What the Springbok game is really like we may gather adequately from the cabled account of the two Tests. Heavy forwards, close scrums, long kicking into touch, no open play till within striking distance, and then, too often, the familiar spectacle of four three-quarters running straight across the ground—it all reads like the reports of the tightly compivs: ;d, slow, unscientific and uninteresting matches which bored the New Zealand football public almost to extinction twenty years ago. No doubt our men can play that sort of game if they try, but they have naturally taken a little time to pick up the tactics and strategy long since discarded here as obsolete. Of course, the Springboks have all along enjoyed the immense advantage of securing the ball in the scrum, and with that in their favour a heavy team, playing a "ti£ht" game, shoidd generally win. it remains to be seen if the All Blacks, having learned to counteract the Springbok methods, can introduce enough initiative and originality into their own play to get the better of the oldfashioned and stereotyped game preferred by their opponents.