Squeezed at the Calabash: Springboks 29, All Blacks 24

For half an hour in Soweto, the All Blacks were playing the rugby of the series. They left the Calabash beaten 29-24, a man down in the captaincy, and needing to win in Baltimore just to share the trophy.

In front of 85,976 at FNB Stadium, South Africa took the third Test of the "Rugby's Greatest Rivalry" tour and with it a 2-1 series lead that cannot now become a series defeat. The final Test, at the home of the NFL's Baltimore Ravens next weekend, will either give the Springboks the inaugural trophy outright or leave it shared at two wins apiece.

The shape of the game was strange and, in the end, familiar. New Zealand made 12 line breaks to South Africa's five, and the official All Blacks match report conceded the side "had the better of the figures" while wondering why they could not convert them. The answer lived in the set piece. The Springbok scrum won five penalties in succession and a penalty try, and their lineout maul travelled more than 20 metres for the try that broke the game open. Power beat panache, and not for the first time in this rivalry.

How it unfolded

The start belonged to the visitors. Ardie Savea picked up off Asafo Aumua's lineout carry and scored in the 9th minute, with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu in the bin moments later for a deliberate knock-down, and when Savea arrived in support of Leroy Carter to score his second in the 25th, New Zealand led 12-5. Kurt-Lee Arendse had answered in between, set free by Damian de Allende's footwork. Cheslin Kolbe's night had already ended inside ten minutes with a failed head assessment, later revealed as a broken jaw.

Then the match pivoted twice in ten minutes. Around the half-hour Savea took Malcolm Marx's head to his shoulder at a breakdown and left the field, two tries and a team-high eight carries into one of his great halves. Just before the break the Springbok scrum marched the All Blacks off their own line for a penalty try, and on its stroke Ruben Love was sin-binned for cynical offside. From 12-5 up with their captain on the field, New Zealand went to the sheds 12-12 without him, facing 40 minutes that started a man short.

They still hit the front. Will Jordan broke from deep, chipped ahead, and after Carter regathered, finished for 17-12 in the 56th minute. Then came the squeeze SuperSport called decisive: a 25-minute stretch in which Jesse Kriel burst 40 metres to score, Marx rode a driving maul over 20 metres to the line, and Feinberg-Mngomezulu's penalty stretched it to 29-17. Samisoni Taukei'aho's try from a tap move after the siren, converted by Damian McKenzie, dressed the scoreboard at 29-24.

What they said

"I thought it was epic," said Rassie Erasmus, whose win made him the most successful international coach against the All Blacks in history. "It was fierce in every department. The scoreboard was close at the end, and we're just happy we won."

The scrum had been the week's running argument, after Dave Rennie questioned the Springboks' angles following Cape Town and Erasmus bluntly denied, with an expletive for emphasis, that his pack walked around rather than scrummed through. In victory he was more wry than triumphant. "I don't think we were dominant at scrum time today, I think it was pretty even, and it could easily have gone against us," he said. "I'm glad the narrative around scrums gets parked now after tonight." And of the All Blacks: "We envy the way they handle the ball, and I'm not sitting here today saying we're awesome."

Rennie did not go looking for excuses. "They made hay while they had momentum tonight. We didn't do that enough," he said. "Discipline hurt us at times. They're the world champions for a reason." On the scrum: "They got rewarded for dominance at times so no issues with that." On the moment he kept returning to, Jordan putting a kick dead at a critical juncture: "That was just unlucky."

Siya Kolisi's 55th win as captain made him the most successful Springbok captain of all time, a record he waved away. "If this were tennis it would be different, but this is a team sport," he said. Playing at FNB, in Soweto, was the part he wanted to talk about: "That's what we play for, not just the people who can afford it, but everyone."

The cost

The casualty list is the story that travels. Savea's shoulder injury, later confirmed by the All Blacks as a dislocation, rules him out of Baltimore, and he is joined on the flight home by Quinn Tupaea, who led the haka and then damaged a knee, and Luke Jacobson, whose elbow tendon injury emerged after he had finished the game as stand-in captain. South Africa lose Kolbe, with Ben-Jason Dixon also staying behind under concussion protocols. A ferocious series has billed each side a marquee player or three.

There were milestones amid the bruises. Tupou Vaa'i won his 50th cap on a difficult night under the high ball. Savea's double took him to 35 Test tries. Marx, the reigning World Rugby Player of the Year, left to a standing ovation from a Soweto crowd that knew what it had watched.

Referee Nika Amashukeli's evening generated a storm of its own, from the penalty try to the cards, and that debate deserves its own telling. The rugby question is simpler and harder: the All Blacks have a week to find a set piece in Baltimore, without their captain, or the first Greatest Rivalry trophy goes to the world champions outright.