Dave Rennie has questioned why the Springboks are making their disciplinary submissions to match officials public, saying he has no intention of following suit ahead of Saturday's Rugby Championship clash at Ellis Park.
"We sent in clips of concerns that we've got. I'm sure they've done the same thing," Rennie said. "I'm not sure why they're trying to air that stuff in the media. I've got no plans on sharing any of the clips that we've sent in with the media."
Rennie was specifically responding to Felix Jones's public comments on All Blacks indiscipline, which he addressed directly: "Felix was pointing out a handful of things around clawing a leg — we did that once, got penalised. We threw a guy across the lineout once, got penalised. We were pulling at the back of them, got penalised and sinbinned. We've learnt, and the discipline was much better on the weekend, and we know that's going to be important against Springboks."
Saturday will be Rennie's first test against the Springboks as All Blacks head coach, and he heads to Johannesburg with a sobering recent record in mind — New Zealand have lost five of their last six meetings with South Africa, including a record home defeat in Wellington. Despite that, Rennie is refusing to treat the occasion as anything other than an opportunity.
"You're going to Ellis Park to play the Springboks — it's almost the mecca, but we're really excited by the challenge and being here for three weeks, we've had good prep."
Rennie identified aerial defence and discipline as the two areas that will determine whether the All Blacks can break that sequence, warning his squad against handing South Africa easy entries into their 22. "We expect a lot of aerial attack, and if we can defuse that, that'll give us some opportunity to attack. There'll be times when it's an arm wrestle, and you have to dig in. We're going to have to really empty out the tank."