The All Blacks begin the most unusual assignment of their modern era early on Saturday morning New Zealand time, walking out at DHL Stadium in Cape Town to face the Stormers in the opening match of an eight game tour of South Africa. Kick off is 7.10pm Friday local time, which is 5.10am Saturday back home.
It is a fixture that has never happened before. New Zealand has played plenty of rugby in Cape Town, winning 17 of 25 matches there with seven losses and a draw, but it has never met the Stormers, the United Rugby Championship franchise that carries the old Western Province colours. The last time an All Blacks side played a Cape Town provincial team was 1976, when Western Province came from 11-0 down inside the final 20 minutes to win 12-11.
The tour has been sold as Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry and it is a deliberate attempt to bring back something the game largely abandoned. New Zealand will play all four South African URC franchises, the Stormers, then the Sharks in Durban, the Bulls in Pretoria and the Lions at Ellis Park, alongside a four test Freedom Cup series against the Springboks. The first test is at Ellis Park on 22 August, followed by tests on 29 August and 5 September, before the series finishes on 12 September at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, the home of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens and the first time the two countries have met on American soil. ESPN reported the Baltimore fixture when it was confirmed.
The cost of building that tour was the Rugby Championship, which is not being played this year and moves to a biennial cycle. That makes the next five weeks a test of the idea itself. If long tours with midweek provincial games can hold an audience in 2026, more of them will follow. If they cannot, this will be remembered as an expensive experiment.
Stormers coach John Dobson has been open about carrying that weight. “For a club side to take on an international team ranked second in the world is a massive opportunity and one that every player and management member is looking forward to,” he said ahead of the match. He has argued the traditional tour format, where a touring side plays the best local provincial teams as well as the internationals, is what is really on trial over the four weeks.
Dave Rennie has picked a side well short of his strongest, with frontline players held back for the Sharks match in Durban four days later. Lock Patrick Tuipulotu captains the team for the second time, filling in for tour captain Ardie Savea, who is still in New Zealand, and for Codie Taylor, who was named tour captain and is carrying a calf injury.
Savea’s absence is by design rather than accident. He was given an extended break after the July series and will not link up with the squad until the week of the first test, meaning he misses the Stormers, Sharks and Bulls games. “We need to find a window where we can freshen him up. This seemed the obvious time, and so it was a pretty simple decision,” Rennie said when the squad was announced, noting Savea had carried a heavy workload over the past two seasons. RNZ covered the decision at the time.
Two players will become All Blacks off the bench. Hurricanes prop Siale Lauaki and first five-eighth Josh Jacomb were both named among the reserves. “Firstly, I want to congratulate the new All Blacks Siale and Josh. It will be a very exciting and proud day for them and their families,” Rennie said in the team announcement.
Seven more players will pull on the jersey for the first time this year, a list that says plenty about how much churn the squad has been through. Ollie Norris, Fabian Holland, Simon Parker and Ethan Blackadder come back among the forwards, with Kyle Preston, Beauden Barrett and Rieko Ioane returning in the backs. Barrett starts at first five-eighth and it is his first outing under Rennie. For Parker, named at blindside flanker, the next few weeks amount to an audition for a place in next year’s Rugby World Cup squad.
Behind Barrett, Cortez Ratima starts at halfback with Peter Lakai at number eight and Anton Segner on the openside. Josh Moorby is at fullback, Leroy Carter and Ioane on the wings, and Anton Lienert-Brown and Billy Proctor in midfield. George Bower, Samisoni Taukei’aho and Pasilio Tosi make up the front row, with Tuipulotu and Holland behind them.
The Stormers are in pre-season and are missing a number of Springboks, but the side is not thin. Warrick Gelant is at fullback, Seabelo Senatla on the wing and Ruhan Nel captains from centre. Evan Roos, Hacjivah Dayimani and Deon Fourie form a loose forward trio with a great deal of test rugby between them. At first five-eighth is 20 year old Yaqeen Ahmed, who captained the Junior Springboks to the Under 20 world title and now makes his senior debut against the All Blacks, which is either a nightmare or the best possible start to a career.
Rennie is not treating it as a warm up. “We know the Stormers will kick a lot and apply pressure through that. They’ve got absolute lightning wheels all over the park,” he said. He also described the home side as a big, physical outfit mixing talented young players with Springboks, adding that his team was “preparing for a real war of attrition”.
England’s Karl Dickson has the whistle. The match is live on Sky Sport in New Zealand, and for anyone willing to set an alarm, it is the first look at a touring format nobody under 40 has seen the All Blacks attempt.
Are you getting up at 5am for this one, and do you want to see more old style tours in the calendar? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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