Boks shocking in ragged win
Brad Morgan
22 August 2007
The Springboks continued their preparations for the Rugby World Cup with an outing against Irish side Connacht in Aberdeen on Tuesday night. The South African team - populated mostly with Jake White's second choice players - won 18-3 in a shockingly inept display.
Connacht, playing their first match of the season, is anything but a powerhouse. In fact, in last season's Magners League, played between Irish, Scottish, and Welsh teams, Connacht finished second from bottom with only four wins and two draws in 20 matches.
The line-up the Irish team put onto the field against the Boks was also not their strongest combination, but that fact serves only to underline just how poor and sluggish South Africa's performance was.
Worst half of Bok rugby ever?
The first half, after which the Boks led only 3-0, would surely rank at the top, or at the very least near the top, of a list of the worst halves of rugby ever
played by the Springboks.
Sadly, the second half performance wasn't much better.
It's not that South Africa didn't create any opportunities to score. They did, but time after time they also conspired to make a mess of those chances by knocking on, by conceding penalties, by poor decision making, and by failing to keep the ball alive and available for a pass.
It was frustrating to watch.
It was so bad that the clichéd expression "schoolboy errors" comes to mind, but, frankly, some of those errors wouldn't even qualify as schoolboy errors.
Error after error
Instances like a kick off by Connacht come to mind. In the strong wind, it appeared as if the ball might not travel the required 10 metres. It did, however, and the Boks' jumpers completely missed the catch.
A player just behind them obviously felt the ball wouldn't carry 10 metres. It actually carried about 11 or 12 metres, coming down on the ground with the player
caught completely unawares. He then made a clumsy attempt to catch the ball and knocked it on.
Later, Connacht kicked the ball deep into the Springboks' 22-metre area, forcing a lineout only five metres from the South African line. Usually that would be no problem for the Boks, with lineout wins pretty much automatic. This time, however, Connacht won the South African throw-in.
The win, though, was untidy and the ball bounced off the ground, sitting up invitingly for SA to regain possession. Instead, it resulted in yet another ham-fisted attempt to catch the ball, which was knocked on, resulting in Connacht once again regaining possession.
'A joke'
Those two instances are merely representative of the entire Bok display, a microcosm of a shocking performance, described at halftime by former Springbok flyhalf Naas Botha as "a joke".
It was certainly a major come-down after the first-choice team dismantled Namibia 105-13 in the
team's first World Cup warm-up match.
Worryingly, the Boks' frustrations were mirrored in a number of aggressive incidents – although both teams were guilty of this – with Bismarck du Plessis being the worst transgressor when he floored the Irish side's scrumhalf Conor McPhillips with an elbow to the face. That earned the hooker a yellow card, but it could well have been a red.
Penalty
The Boks started well enough, moving swiftly onto the attack and winning a penalty only five metres from the Connacht tryline and almost directly in front of the posts. Butch James slotted the easy penalty, but that was to prove the only points of the entire half.
Ruan Pienaar, playing at flyhalf, made a series of incisive breaks, but his support was lacking, which meant he couldn't make what should have been easy passes for tries.
Twice, Waylon Murray was put into space on the left wing, with only one player standing between him and the tryline.
On both occasions he was tackled and the move broke down. On both occasions, too, he was carrying the ball in his right hand, which prevented him making a scoring pass back inside.
It's a simple technical error that shouldn't be seen at Springbok level.
Try
After the break the Boks showed greater fire. It didn't take long for the more focused approach to pay dividends when, in one of the few occasions in the match that they managed to put things together, the forwards drove effectively, sucking in defenders, before the ball was sent down the backline until Ashwin Willemse was put into space.
He crossed for the try, but Butch James, who was playing at centre, was off target with his conversion attempt.
Connacht was next to score when substitute Andy Dunne kicked a penalty.
As time ticked on, South Africa failed to break down the Irish defences, and frustrations built. The men in green and gold once again slid into a poorly
structured, error-strewn effort.
Off the ball, pushing and shoving became a regular occurrence, and one or two punches were thrown.
Penalty decisions
When SA was awarded a penalty on the Connacht 22-metre line, about 10 metres in from the left-hand sideline, it appeared to be the ideal opportunity to kick for touch, throw-in to the lineout, and drive over for a try. The Bok scrum had been overpowering the Irish team in the tight phases and it would have been reasonable to expect they could force their way over from close in.
Instead, a decision was made to kick for goal. It backfired when James' effort went wide.
Later, he missed from 45 metres. With a strong wind blowing across the field, kicking for touch inside the Connacht 22-metre area would have seemed to make more sense. Again, the kick was pushed to the right of the uprights.
South Africa eventually scored a second try when Jacques Cronje, who came on as a
substitute and showed some fire and form, bulled his way over near the poles. James converted to put the Springboks 15-3 in front.
Almighty disappointment
Andre Pretorius, another substitute, completed the scoring with a penalty, but a final score of 18-3 against an under-strength team, playing its first game of the season, was an almighty disappointment.
After the match, coach Jake White suggested the Springboks might have been overconfident after their thrashing of Namibia. That could be so, but it is no excuse for the miserable performance they produced.
Besides their poor finishing, the Boks also didn't perform up to scratch on defence. They made most of their tackles, but there were few of the big hits that they usually can be counted on to produce, the kind of hits that stop the momentum of the opposition. Instead, Connacht, if anything, showed better continuity than South Africa.
A malady
A
number of players were playing their first matches for some time because of injuries and it showed. Captain Bob Skinstad and fellow loose-forward Danie Rossouw were careless with the ball and made little impact when carrying it. It was a malady that was not unique to them, however, but one expects South African loose-forwards to make a positive impact on a match.
Winger Ashwin Willemse, who played almost no Super 14 rugby before being recalled to the Springbok team, appears to be a shadow of the player who was named Player of the Year in 2003.
The lineouts were messy and poor and, while the Bok scrum dominated the tight phases, the team made no decent use of their advantage in that aspect of play.
Match practice
The issue of a lack of match practice is a concerning one.
Since the Super 14 final, the Springboks have had precious little match practice. Against Connacht, most of the players appeared underdone, lacking the sharp
decision-making, the physical edge, and skills to be honed only in match situations.
By contrast, it was interesting to see New Zealand's All Blacks in action in the Air New Zealand Cup this past weekend, as they have been in weeks past.
Who has got it right, the Springboks or the All Blacks? Maybe neither?
The answers will be revealed in France, with the World Cup kicking off on 7 September.
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