Sunday 3 June 2007
Keo, in the Sunday Argus, writes that the Springbok stutter at Loftus will help keep Bok feet on the ground in this World Cup year.
A team of greater quality would have hurt the Springboks in this series decider. After the festivities of Bloemfontein came the sober reminder that the Boks, a team on the rise, remain vulnerable when neutralized in confrontation.
For a large part of this match England’s defensive heroics frustrated South Africa, exposed limitations in the decision-making and emphasized just how important Jaque Fourie remains to the World Cup challenge.
With go forward minimal in the opening hour, the Boks missed Danie Rossouw’s physicality in attacking Jonny Wilkinson’s channel and without Fourie in the midfield there was never the threat of a linebreak fashioned through sheer strength.
Wynand Olivier, at No 13, was poor. The Bulls midfielder is a player who can excel when running into space, but when forced to make an impression in a congested contest he went missing. The likes of New Zealand and France won’t be as charitable in midfield team selections come the World Cup.
In tighter matches, again read France and New Zealand at the World Cup, a Bok team shifting the ball laterally and aimlessly will get beaten.
England showed a heart beat, but outside of good old fashioned guts, they offered nothing in attack. They didn’t have the backs to trouble the Boks, but they did have enough conviction in the forwards to leave the Boks bewildered at their inability to break the first line of defence in that first hour.
There was courage in the English performance and there was a definite fatigue about the Boks. You combine those two factors and you have a contest. Defensive heroics kept England competitive, but they were never going to challenge for a famous result.
You sensed the Bok players knew that and while the mind may have been willing, the legs certainly weren’t. Those Bulls and Sharks players who have been on an emotional high for the last month predictably lacked the intensity of the last two weekends.
Even so, Jake White would have expected better decision-making from the 8, 9 and 10 axis. Pierre Spies, when running against tired legs in the last quarter, was colossal but in the first hour the performance was more average than exceptional.
Spies scored two cracking tries and some saw it as enough justification for the man of the match award. It is not an opinion I shared with the masses.
The Bulls loose-forward has every attribute to be a great, but to deny what he is getting wrong at the moment would be to deny how good he should become. He has flaws in his game and they were evidence when Saturday’s test was still a contest.
Schalk Burger again was monumental and the pick of the forwards. There is substance to his game, as there is to the make-up of Juan Smith’s weekly contributions.
The Boks won well, scored 50 points for a second successive weekend against England, and yet there still wasn’t a sense of satisfaction. Bryan Habana’s individual brilliance shouldn’t mask the frailties of a back division that never threatened from structured play.
There was much to celebrate about the Boks win, but equally there was as much to keep all of South Africa humble. The Boks are a good team, but they showed in Pretoria they’re not yet the finished team.
Talk of a World Cup win is premature. Let’s first beat New Zealand in Durban.
Posted by keo - keo.co.za
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