Nick Mallett pinpoints key areas Springboks must fix before All Blacks Test

The world champions beat Argentina 17-10 in Buenos Aires on Saturday, producing a performance that was short of their best before holding on for victory.

While Mallett was impressed by South Africa's scrum and defensive effort, he identified the lineout, attacking play and contestable kicking as areas where the Boks can make significant improvements.

"If we just look at the positives out of the game," Mallett said on the Talking Boks podcast. "I think continuing our scrum dominance against everyone, that was really good to see. Although there weren't many scrums in the game, I think we had seven on our ball. And the second thing was the defence.

"We do talk, and I was a bit critical and have been critical about the fluidity of the attack and the inability to offload, except in the try in the 39th minute, where I thought both Andre Esterhuizen and Canan Moodie did wonderfully well. That was a beautiful bit of sleight of hand.

"I think we can get better in our lineouts. I think we can definitely get better with our attack, and we need to improve our contestables. Because playing the All Blacks, the areas of their game that were weak against the Stormers were scrums, maul defence and contestables in particular.

"The Stormers, when they managed to get from set piece to set piece, the All Blacks didn't look as though they enjoyed that at all. They wanted a quick, fast-flowing game, and so we need to get our contestable kicking back on point. That is a very strong area of our game that was way off this last weekend."

The Springboks will finally join the Greatest Rivalry tour when the first Test kicks off at Ellis Park on Saturday, August 22.

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