Boks brought back down to earth with a bump by All Blacks

While understandably wanting to highlight the positives in a resounding defeat to the All Blacks, Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber also understood that his side got a reality check in Auckland on Saturday night. 

Losing by 15 points in a match they never led and that for the majority of they were second best must serve as a significant blow to the confidence of the world champions.  

“Our plan was always to win the Rugby Championship, but also to assess,” Nienaber said.

“We’ve got four more games to make sure we get our house in order before we go to the World Cup. So we got good answers in both games [against Australia, a 43-12 win to the Boks last weekend, and New Zealand].”

The Boks were second best in all facets at Mt Smart Stadium; most concerningly for them they lost the set-piece battle, while the defence said Nienaber was “bad”, and they were dominated in the collisions. 

The Boks had a 20-minute period at the start of the second half where they asserted themselves, but even in doing so it will be concerning that the momentum they created was eventually snuffed out by the hosts who finished the stronger team. 

“They had a lot of experience on their bench and that came through in the third quarter but we rode through that, which is a good little step for us,” said Nienaber’s counterpart, Ian Foster.

“They had a lot of moments where they were on top in that second half and rather than losing our way for too long, we managed to find a way back.”

Nienaber naturally was pleased that his side could fight back, closing to within six points. “I’m proud of how we came back. They led by 17 points, we scored three tries in the second half to get back into it.” 

The reality, however, was summed up in Nienaber’s next comment. “We let it slip in the first 20 minutes,” he said. 

The All Blacks overwhelmed the Springboks in that period with tries from Aaron Smith and Shannon Frizell in which their power and pace proved too much.

“I just felt their offloads stuck, the way they moved the ball and they played an incredible opening passage in the game and scored some very good tries,” said prop Steven Kitshoff.

New Zealand are now very much in the driver’s seat as far as the Rugby Championship is concerned, with two wins from their two games giving them a four-point lead over South Africa.

The tournament takes a two-week break before resuming with the All Blacks hopping across the Tasman Sea to tackle the under-fire Wallabies in Melbourne, while the Boks will face Argentina at Ellis Park.

They will head to Buenos Aires the next week for a return match — which is not part of the Rugby Championship — and then play two warm-up games against Wales and New Zealand in the UK before the World Cup starts.

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