Brenden Nel

Whereas in super rugby, the tendency is to try and spread the ball as much as possible, try and unlock the defences out wide and score tries.

And there's a case for both of them.

I don't think there's a silver bullet in this thing.

I think you've got to do what works for your country.

And I do think the one thing that

new zealand does miss and i think we've spoken about this before is that just that intense physicality that the new zealand south africa games bring and i'm not one of these that say that it's just south africa south african team's always physical but the the just the lifting intensity when new zealand south african teams on any level play each other we saw it the other day with the under 20s i mean that was a fabulous game in port elizabeth uh yeah you just see the difference in that and that's to me

What New Zealand's now missing is that just that regular contact, that intensity, that lifting of your game to your opponent.

I don't think Australia does it as much on a provincial level as they maybe do it at times at national level.

But even that, if you look at the Blizzard Cup, they haven't won that for how many years?

I think that's the thing.

You don't get that intense thing week in and week out in Super Rugby.

I think it's always difficult until you get them to go on a one-on-one.

I think we've all wondered how the Crusaders would do against the Leinster.

Although I can tell you from watching the South African teams now for four or five years in Europe, the one thing I can say about those sides is they're incredibly professional.

And that's the step up that South African sides have had to learn to make up.

You know, we...

In Super Rugby, it was more on the rugby side that you had to learn to keep up with the pace and the intensity of Super Rugby.

In Europe, it's not so much the pace, although there are a lot of tries scored.

The Bulls, I think, scored almost 60 tries in 16 games, so that tells you.

But the intensity and just the tribalness of it there is a totally different thing to what we're used to.