Four days after thrashing the Sharks 54-0, the All Blacks wrap up their run of warm-up matches on Saturday in Pretoria against the Bulls. Dave Rennie has changed his entire starting XV and, for the first time, handed the captaincy to Codie Taylor.

Back from injury, the 35-year-old hooker plays his first match of the tour, the 110th of his career with the national side. “It’s a proud moment for an All Blacks centurion who has given so much to this team as a player and as a leader,” said Dave Rennie. Taylor will be joined in the front row by Xavier Numia and Tyrel Lomax, who are also getting their first outing of the tour.

The other talking point is at half-back. Josh Jacomb, 25, who came off the bench against the Stormers for his first minutes in black, makes his first start alongside his Chiefs teammate Cortez Ratima. As a result, Beauden Barrett, who started at fly-half in the first match, drops back to full-back, a position he had not played for the All Blacks since the 2024 tour of South Africa. Rieko Ioane moves into the centres alongside Anton Lienert-Brown, while Leroy Carter and Josh Moorby take the wings. The Parker-Segner-Lakai back row and the Holland-Tuipulotu lock pairing are unchanged from the opening match. In all, fourteen of the twenty-three players selected faced the Stormers.

Opposite them, Johan Ackermann fields four Springboks, with Marcell Coetzee as captain, Willie Le Roux at full-back and Curwin Bosch, formerly of Brive, at fly-half for his debut with the Pretoria franchise. History favours the New Zealanders: in four meetings since 1949, the Bulls have won only once, a 29-27 snatched by Northern Transvaal in August 1976, almost fifty years to the day before this match.

This match, with no caps awarded since it pits the national side against a franchise, is the last before the first Test against the Springboks on 22 August at Ellis Park. “There’s healthy competition for places, and this is another chance for the players to show what they can do,” warned Rennie, whose side come off two wins over the Stormers (38-21) and the Sharks (54-0).