Justin Marshall insists that the All Blacks have to concede that the Springboks have the dominant scrum despite complaints over its legality.
Instead, the former scrum-half states that Dave Rennie’s men have to counteract it in other ways and make it a less important factor in the match.
Rennie has accused South Africa of “walking around” in the scrum, something which drew a stinging response from Boks boss Rassie Erasmus.
World Rugby on Boks’ side
The New Zealand head coach also revealed that World Rugby have disagreed with the All Blacks’ assessment of the set-piece.
“It’s one of those things that’s inevitable really, at the end of the day if we by our own admission didn’t look at it over the three Test matches so far and didn’t say they had the superior scrum, we would be kidding ourselves,” Marshall told Sport Nation.
“What we’ve got to do is find a way around them not having the ability to have as many scrums as they would like and assert their dominance on us.
“Equally, try and keep them out of the zones that are really dangerous and that’s inside the 22. They’re the best team in the world at accumulating points in that zone and I think on average, certainly before this Test series, every entry into the 22, they’re accumulating 5.2 points, which is an incredible statistic.
“Every time you go into the 22, you’re coming away with 5.2 points which is pretty damn good. We know we’ve got to try and restrict their set-piece, try and negate the amount of scrums in the Test.”
The Springboks only have five put-ins on their own ball in the third Test, but each one resulted in the All Blacks infringing.
They conceded four penalties and a penalty try as it played a key role in South Africa claiming a 29-24 triumph in Soweto to go 2-1 up in the four-Test series.
Rennie’s side therefore have to be squeaky clean when it comes to their error rate or else they may be in for even more pain against the Boks in Baltimore.
All Blacks’ attacking potency
“In the first Test at Ellis Park, the first scrum wasn’t until the 16th minute, which is advantageous to the All Blacks,” Marshall added.
“We didn’t use up any energy in the scrum so the way that the game played out, there wasn’t a huge amount of scrums and that hasn’t happened over the last two Tests.
“Cut down the error rate so they’re not kicking for touch or penalties, they’re not kicking for touch and dominating lineouts.
“We know where we can get them – 13 tries in three Test matches. We can get outside of this blitz defence now, we’ve just got to stay away from where they want to take us.
“They want to take us into the hurt locker, set-piece and physicality-wise. We just want to avoid that at all cost, and when we do, we look like we can hurt them big time.”