Boks were bad as a team
|Published
The lessons learnt against the Barbarians is the Boks rely too much on the forwards and turn to playing as individuals. The lessons learnt against the Barbarians is the Boks rely too much on the forwards and turn to playing as individuals.
The point of a Barbarians game is not about winning or losing, so perhaps the 26-20 defeat suffered by the Springboks in their final tour match at Twickenham is not a reason for South Africans to wear sack-cloth and go into mourning.
This after all was a Bok team that had been weakened by the departure of some key players for home, a couple of injuries and the obvious need to experiment in a game that was meant to be a festival occasion.
The Barbarians also had several class players, most of them in the backline, that easily pierced the Bok defensive line en-route to scoring three first half tries that set up a comfortable 19-3 lead at the break.
The Barbarian pack was not imbued with the same level of class and experience as the backline, so it was somewhat surprising that they should be so comfortable both in the scrums and the lineouts in the first half.
Western Province stalwart Anton van Zyl led the way, poaching some crucial balls against the throw, and was a deserved Man of the Match.
Flanker Martyn Williams also exposed the Bok management’s folly in going into this game without a fetcher.
Even when the Bok first phases were working, they tended to get turned over far too often, and Williams was at the heart of it. Indeed, it was his steal early in the match that set up the momentum that eventually led to the first Barbarians try to Drew Mitchell.
In keeping with the Barbarians spirit, the Baabaas coach Nick Mallett was duty bound to use all 22 players in his squad, and it was the changes he had to make to the pack at half-time that effectively changed the momentum of the game after the break.
Suddenly, as they had done at the same venue against England one week earlier, it was the Boks who took control at the scrums, and the massive effort they put in during the third quarter of the match infused the Boks with the confidence to make the game more of a contest than it had looked like being earlier.
However, apart from the forwards, there was little else going for the South Africans, with their attacking plays being discordant and at times shambolic, as indeed they had been against England.
In short, they played like a group of individuals, and not a team, and made an unacceptable number of errors for this level of the game.
And this is why maybe we should look beyond the festival nature of the game, make an about turn on the first point made in this report, and note the concerns that should have come out of the game.
For it is an inescapable fact that those concerns are the same ones that have been there all season, and even before that.
The backs, as they have all tour, lacked penetration and lacked organisation.
We know how good those players are when they play for their provincial coaches and in their well-organised provincial systems.
So why do they look so mediocre when they pull on the Springbok jersey and play for the Springbok coaching staff?
While the defeat should not be seen as a reason for panic, the big question that keeps being asked but is not answered should still be of massive concern to Bok fans – it’s the question that focuses on why the Boks look so clueless every time an opposing team is able to front them at forward.
When the Bok scrum and lineout was working yesterday, they were able to smash away at the Barbarians and their renowned physicality had an impact on the game.
But during the long periods when they didn’t have that platform and weren’t getting the better of the Barbarians physically, they looked bereft of ideas and seemed unable to settle on a game-plan.
The Boks scored a try to replacement hooker Bandise Maku off the last move of the game to make it look close on the scoreboard afterwards, but in reality they were well beaten and the try was only a consolation effort.
There might be a temptation to use the excuse that the Bok side that played yesterday was playing together for the first time, but most of the players who played at Twickenham have been part of the Bok system for the past four weeks.
Several of the individual players in the Bok team had their moments, however, it was as a team that they didn’t impress. It’s been the story of 2010 for the world champions.