Different routes to the scoreboard
| Four Tests | South Africa | New Zealand |
|---|---|---|
| Wins | 3 | 1 |
| Points | 121 | 111 |
| Tries | 14 | 17 |
| Penalty goals | 9 | 0 |
The aggregate is not the series
South Africa won three of the four Tests in Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry. Across those Tests, they scored 121 points to New Zealand’s 111. New Zealand led the aggregate try count, 17 to 14, with the South African total including a penalty try.
There is no contradiction. A series awards its result match by match. A large win in one fixture does not compensate for narrow losses in the others. Aggregate points, tries and match wins are three different summaries of the same contest.
The three-point contribution
South Africa scored nine penalty goals across the Tests. New Zealand scored none. Those kicks contributed 27 Springbok points. The comparison explains one source of the difference in scoring composition; it does not prove that declining a shot at goal was wrong in any specific situation.
That decision depends on field position, score, time and the likely return from another option. The result tells us what was scored, not what every alternative would have produced. We can identify the scoring pattern without inventing a counterfactual.
Keep the tour and the Tests apart
The full tour included four non-Test fixtures. New Zealand won all four, scoring 183 points to 75. Across all eight tour games they finished with five wins and three defeats, and 294 points to 196.
Adding those fixtures to the four-Test totals changes the answer and the competition being described. The figures above deliberately keep the Test series together. A good tour ledger should let a reader see both scopes without mistaking one for the other.
Sources & methodology · 2 references
This story draws on our dated research edition. Figures are factual aggregates; prose and visualisations are original. Follow the source links to inspect the underlying reporting.
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