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All the crucial stats ahead of round 3 of the Rugby Championship

New Zealand’s Ben Smith.

New Zealand look well on course for a sixth Rugby Championship triumph in seven years following two convincing wins over Australia in the opening rounds of this year’s competition.

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The All Blacks brushed aside the Wallabies to put themselves in the box seat once again and will be confident of building on that strong start when they host Argentina this weekend.

The Pumas were 32-19 victors over South Africa in Mendoza a fortnight ago, having opened with a defeat to the Springboks in Durban, but are unlikely to repeat the feat against the All Blacks in Nelson.

Australia coach Michael Cheika, meanwhile, will be under pressure to get the Wallabies’ campaign off the ground when they host South Africa in Brisbane.

With the help of Opta, we take a statistical look at the third round of fixtures.

New Zealand v Argentina

Argentina will be full of confidence following their victory over South Africa last time out but their record against the All Blacks makes for grim reading – a draw in 1985 is the best they have to show from 26 matches against the world champions.

The only time the Pumas have ever led against New Zealand was in this fixture last year, which they went on to lose 39-22.

If Argentina are to record back-to-back Rugby Championship wins for the first time in their history, they will rely heavily on the defensive qualities of Marcos Kremer and captain Agustin Creevy – only Australia’s David Pocock (35) has made more tackles in this year’s tournament than the duo’s 33 and 28 respectively.

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New Zealand have won each of their last seven games on home soil, including their last five by an average margin of 35 points.

This will be the first New Zealand Test to be held at Nelson’s Trafalgar Park, which hosted three matches at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Australia v South Africa

Each of the last two matches between these sides have ended in a draw – their only tie prior to that was in 2001.

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The Wallabies have an impressive recent home record against the Springboks, having lost just one of the last nine meetings in Australia.

But they have been out of form in 2018 and have lost four of their five Tests this year. The last time they won fewer than five Tests in a calendar year was in 1995 (W4, L4).

South Africa are seven tries away from their 200th against Australia; they would be the first opponent against whom they have crossed for a double century of tries and just the second team to have done so against the Wallabies (New Zealand – 450).

No player has won more turnovers than Pocock (six) in this year’s tournament. South Africa’s Malcolm Marx can match Pocock’s total but is a shock omission from the Springboks’ starting XV, while Pocock has failed to recover from a neck injury and is also absent.

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SK 26 minutes ago
'The Wallabies only have themselves to blame': How the Lions sunk Australia in Melbourne

Having taken a 23-5 lead it was important to manage the game from there but Australia just couldnt do it. Conceding two tries before the break surrendering 12 points in the way they did was incredibly poor. The penalty for going in the side at the breakdown was just silly and allowed the Lions to get up field when 23-10 and some of the play in the 10 minutes before half time on defence was really not up to scratch. The Lions side has played in patches. They are not consistent and by no means have hit top form throughout this tour. When they have been in 5th gear the Aussies have had no answer and so it was the case in the last 20mins. The lack of game management comes directly down to an inexperienced backline, bad leadership, poor selection, a lack of killer instinct in a team desperately searching for gains against top opposition. They were underdone and should have had more warm up matches. The Wallabies spent the whole of last year improving the team and developing combinations to compete against the Lions. Schmidts selections has somehow seemingly countered his own preparation. After working so hard last year to improve the Wallabies have somehow come out like half-baked cookie, limp in most parts, crunchy in others but overall, an inconsistent texture and underwhelming taste that makes you wonder what could have been had you left it in for 5mins longer.

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