NEW ZEALAND are back, and reinstated as favourites for the 2008 TriNations. In light of events in Beijing yesterday, it would be an exaggeration to say that the world was watching, but three tries from the All Blacks avenged the Springbok win in Dunedin, and crushed hopes in South Africa that their team could add the TriNations crown to the World Cup.

Indeed, this match revealed two significant crises. First, the helpless, almost infantile naivety of the Springboks r a i s e d t h e m o s t s e r i o u s question marks over the coaching regime of Peter De Villiers, the coach who even his own Union president described as a “political choice”. South Africa’s bungling, their lack of shape and direction and tactics, the silly timing of their replacements, and the final, horrible intercept-pass that gave New Zealand their third try, indicated strongly that this is a squad with some great players yet absolutely no direction, game plan or shape.

The contrast between the sides was massive. New Zealand are nothing special. They hardly offered anything in attack and Dan Carter, who missed five kicks at goal, is these days nothing more than a serviceable player with the odd decent flash of brilliance, but New Zealand’s tactical aware-ness and basic skills were on a different planet, and their defence was outstanding. Furthermore, they took massive advantage of the fact that yet again, a referee in charge of a match involving New Zealand was utterly hoodwinked by their infringements at the breakdown. South Africa, staggeringly, were penalised off the park at the breakdown.

The second crisis lies in the game at large. Almost all of this match was shapeless with a lack of forward play and direction, which has become the norm under the experimental laws. Anyone watching this match – and especially the other televised games played recently in the southern hemisphere – would really wonder if the International Rugby Board are contemplating abandoning all the experiments. The IRB will not, of course, because too many careers are now bound up with the laws, and the whole ELV concept has b e c o m e n o t s o m u c h a n attempt at improving the game (there is no evidence that any experiment is making the game better), but in saving face for the originators of the experiments.

At least the forthcoming European season will be free of the most ghastly experiments. The fact that three of the four home unions fought bravely to knock back the sanctions experiment – under this, almost all illegalities at the breakdown are now simply a tap penalty – will remove the cheap charter that we saw illustrated in Cape Town yesterday. For an awful long time at Newlands it seemed that we were going to have a 5-0 final scoreline, such was the lack of real attacking capability from New Zealand, and the inability to finish moves off by the home side.

New Zealand had taken the lead after six minutes of hair-raising South African errors and they did so with one of those rather freakish occurrences. Ma’a Nou threw a terrible pass to his left but the fact that the ball bounced checked the opposition defence. South Africa came up slightly slowly, Richie McCaw chipped to the South African corner and Conrad Smith reached the ball first, forcing it down to score under the nose of the covering Butch James.

That was practically all we saw of New Zealand’s attack until the final quarter and indeed, if South Africa had taken their chances or played ice-cold rugby when the try line approached, they could have been well ahead by half-time. Fourie du Preez lost the ball in contact when approaching the New Zealand posts with men in support; soon afterwards, Adrian Jacobs made a poor decision to plough on towards the line when he should have been setting up the ball for players in better positions.

Later in the half, a remarkable break by prop Tendai Mtawarira sent Bryan Habana over the line, after a typically electric finishing burst by the wing, but the touch judge ruled correctly that Habana’s foot had grazed the touchline as he tried to escape the defence.

New Zealand managed to keep the rest of the South African attacks in check. Matt God-dard, the Australian referee, apparently had no grasp of the idea that New Zealand, driving over off their feet or illegally in from the fringes, could possibly be committing any offences. Schalk Burger and Juan Smith, the two South African flankers, are exceptional in many ways but in terms of the cunning needed to kill attacks they are nonstarters compared to All Blacks McCaw and Rodney So’oialo.

The match ambled along a rather desultory course throughout the second half but New Zealand finally managed to put together some phases of play, notably on the back of powerful driving by Brad Thorn and Jerome Kaino. In all, the All Blacks retained the ball through 11 phases and eventually a sharp finishing burst from Carter took him past three defenders before he cleverly reached over his head to ground the ball against the posts. The score came in the final quarter and there was to be absolutely no way back for the home side.

It was in the closing stages that we saw the contrast between the hard-nosed and conservative South African team that won in France last autumn and this bunch of bewildered Boks. Nobody had any idea how to ease their team back into the game. Jean de Villiers, the centre, had looked as bewildered as his teammates throughout the afternoon and when he delivered a high overhead pass out of defence in the closing stages, he measured it perfectly – hooker Keven Mealamu hardly had to move to make the interception.

Mealamu scored, Carter converted and South Africa found, as had England in June, that they were not even good enough to beat New Zealand’s second team. Good job for the rest of the world that their top men are in Europe.