The Springboks played Australia over the weekend, and in a match that I expected to be a one-sided affair in favour of the Wallabies, the formbook was thrown right out the window as we saw the Boks wallop the home side 38 – 12.
In the preview I wrote before the match, the only positive about the South Africans was their forward unit, which I thought would put Australia under pressure, but not win the match. That they did though, by completely outgunning the home side in all facets up front, which led to the South African backline getting front foot ball while the Aussies battled to get their hands on the ball at all.
It was a dog fight first half, which saw the half time score sit at 16 – 6 in favour of the Boks. The only try of the half was scored by Coenie Oosthuizen, who just happened to be on the park for Jannie du Plessis, who had some blood. Oosthuizen flopped over after some strong work by the forwards, a try that was converted by Morne Steyn for an early seven point lead.
Morne Steyn kicked a further three penalties while Australian centre Christian Lealiifano responded with two of his own. You would have thought that the Wallabies would have scored more points considering they played with an extra man for ten minutes. Willem Alberts was shown a yellow card for a deliberate knock down, a card that was even criticized by the one-eyed Australian commentators.
The first points of the second half was scored by Lealiifano, who managed his third penalty of the night, but this was immediately cancelled out by Steyn, who converted a penalty after Michael Hooper was shown a yellow.
The Boks then turned on the magic and scored three tries in a matter of 15 minutes. The first was scored by Jean de Villiers, but was started by a break away from Bryan Habana, who chipped ahead a kick. He was taken out by Quade Cooper, but lock Juandre Kruger collected brilliantly and from the following ruck, de Villiers was given a superb pass into a massive gap and he strolled over for the second try of the night.
The next two tries happened three minutes apart. Willie le Roux was given a long pass inside Aussie territory, but saw the gap inside, brilliantly offloaded to Zane Kirchner, who dived over rather awkwardly to score the third. Le Roux went from creator to scorer as he hit a gap in the Aussie defence to score the all-important fourth try, securing a rare try bonus point for the Springboks.
Looking at the match from an analytical point of view, there are some areas of concern for both teams. I’ll start with the Springboks, being my team and all.
Even though the Bok victory was based on a potent display from the forwards, the backline never did anything positive with the ball. With first try was scored after a forwards move, the second scored on a turnover and lucky collect after a kick through. Both Kirchner and Le Roux’s tries came from basic backline moves with individual brilliance from le Roux. JJ Engelbrecht for instance, did not get his hands on any ball and was never called upon on attack, even though he is the top try scorer for the Boks this year.
The Wallabies have an uphill battle ahead as their team as a whole looked clueless. The game plan should have been to gain ascendency and attack with a potent backline. They tried to run every single ball, from everywhere on the park without gaining the upper hand. This led to the Springbok defence shutting them down and allowing the likes of Francois Louw and Bismarck du Plessis to turnover their ball.
As soon as the Wallabies were behind on the scoreboard, they got reckless and chased the game, to the point where the Springboks would calmly defend and not allow them the space. In rugby, space is created, it is not simply there to run into.
All in all, the South Africans broke a hoodoo of not winning in Brisbane, and will carry plenty of confidence going into the game against the World’s best, the All Blacks. As for the Aussies, they now await Argentina, which is not much of a let up in terms of a team with massive forwards.
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