Former All Black captain Taine Randell has come out in support of the Springboks and their style of play, his comments flying in the face of New Zealand criticism that labelled the Boks as boring.

Writing in his weekly column in the Sunday News, Randell said we should "embrace our differences", not put down those who have an alternative mentality.

"If you look at rugby throughout the world it's in pretty good health and one of the things about rugby structure right now is that there are very different styles through all the top nations and that's something to be celebrated," Randell said.

"It was interesting this week hearing a number of comments where criticism has been directed towards the Springboks, in terms of people saying they're negative and with Graham Henry saying that style is really bad for rugby.

"But I think it's laughable to point to a country like South Africa and say this, because throughout history this has been South Africa's style. They play a punishing game based on a massive forward pack, heaps of pressure and played by very physical players. That was their style back in 1995 when they won the World Cup.

"It's easy to criticise England for the way they play and when they won the World Cup in 2003 people jumped on the bandwagon of how wrong it was to play that way. But it's very arrogant for us to dictate to the world that our style is the right way to play. It upsets people that the way we play isn't the dominant way at the moment because we don't have the players to play it.

"The Springboks have a side full of top quality players at the moment and what it says to me is that you've got to have a good forward pack at international level.

"If the All Blacks had a better forward pack than the Springboks we wouldn't be having this argument because we'd be beating them.

"But because South Africa have the best forward pack in the world means their style dictates how they win games.

"In the games between the Wallabies and All Blacks this year, they've both been decided by the fact the All Blacks had the better forward pack. It wasn't about having the best defence or whatever else, it was the fact our pack played more physically and dominated the tight exchanges.

"I've got no doubt that if our forward pack was playing better we'd beat the Boks too and if our pack was more dominant our backs would shine more. Signs are the All Blacks pack are on the up.

"Prop Owen Franks is a genuine work in progress but he seems to be a lot tighter in his approach. And the inclusion of Kieran Read is going to improve the overall All Blacks performance because it shows we have this emphasis on playing with a high work-rate and that forwards can win us the game, whereas in the past it was about getting the ball and throwing it out to the backline."