Vice-captain Siya Kolisi has called for the Springboks to empty the tank in Saturday’s Test against the All Blacks at Newlands, writes CRAIG LEWIS.
The Boks attempted to play a brave ball-in-hand game against the Wallabies in Bloemfontein in an endeavour to run the visitors off their feet on the highveld, while hoping that an ambitious approach would restore the confidence lost following the heavy defeat to the All Blacks in Albany.
That strategy of hanging onto possession is evidenced by the fact that the Boks made 619m to 438, 141 carries to 95, 198 passes to 116 and executed 23 clean breaks to 12.
Ultimately, the endeavour was there, but the accuracy often wasn’t, with the Boks conceding 11 turnovers, while the final pass after some encouraging phase play often didn’t go to hand as the result of a reckless offload.
It’s a dangerous game to play, and one that only reaped limited reward as the Boks effectively had to rely on a late penalty to salvage a draw. It’s also the type of approach that cannot be copied and pasted against the All Blacks.
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The newly-crowned Rugby Championship winners would be licking their lips at the prospect of the Boks aiming to run the ball at them, with the All Blacks having established themselves as peerless masters of the counter-attack and pouncing on broken-field opportunities.
The Springboks desperately need to add some pragmatism to their play if they are to have any hope of competing against the All Blacks, who will be hunting their sixth straight win over the Boks. In fact, New Zealand have won 10 of their last 11 games against South Africa.
Following Saturday’s clash against the Wallabies, the word from Bok coaches and players was that the draw felt like a loss. The sad reality is that a loss to the All Blacks by anything less than 15 points would probably feel like a win.
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However, the Boks have one final opportunity to prove that they are considerably better than the 57-0 result in Albany, and Kolisi said they had to ensure that there was no holding back over the 80 minutes at Newlands.
‘We will go all out for this final Rugby Championship game because we can look forward to a good break after that. We didn’t get the result we wanted against Australia, but I really think there was a lot of improvement, so that was encouraging … I think we will just need to be better against the All Blacks in terms of our decision-making.’
Despite the disappointment of a draw against the Wallabies, Kolisi insisted that there were positives to be taken out of the performance.
‘That result felt like a loss because we desperately wanted the win after working so hard over the past couple of weeks. A lot was said in the build-up, but we remained really close as a group, and just kept our heads down. So it was unfortunate we couldn’t get away with a win, and we maybe just got a bit too excited at times and forced the passes. But we can’t fault the guys for wanting to have a go, and now we have another opportunity against the All Blacks.’
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The Boks won’t be expected to make any unenforced changes to the starting lineup for Saturday’s clash, with Jean-Luc du Preez just the likely replacement for the injured No 8 Uzair Cassiem.
Although coach Allister Coetzee could consider specialist No 8 Dan du Preez, it’s unlikely that the 22-year-old would be elevated straight into the starting lineup in what would be his first exposure to Test rugby.
The Bok team will be named at 15:00 on Thursday, with the squad having gathered in Cape Town on Sunday.
Photo: Johan Pretorius/Gallo Images
