GAVIN RICH: Winning through growing pains makes for big Bok triumph

By winning both their Rugby Championship games against the All Blacks, the Springboks did what they needed to do and should have been expected to do given their status as the world champions and the No 1 ranked team.

But even though they should have been expected to win, the way they won the Freedom Cup, awarded for a victory in the annual miniseries between the teams that is incorporated into the Championship schedule, represented a bigger step forward for the Boks than might have been imagined beforehand.

I say that because the All Blacks in both games played out of their skins and came a lot closer to replicating their performance in beating Ireland in last year’s World Cup quarterfinal than they have in the interim. The team that played in Johannesburg and Cape Town was much better than the one that struggled to a home series win over England in July and lost to Argentina in the opening game of the Championship.

Scott Barrett and his team raised their game for the Boks, as some ordinary SA teams from a few decades ago sometimes did when playing the Kiwis. It is a special rivalry and while there is bound to be a prolonged postmortem in New Zealand and much unhappiness, I don’t think their coach Scott Robertson is that far wrong when he talks of progress being made.

It was a much better All Black effort than the one in which they were beaten 26-10 at Mbombela Stadium two years ago, and of course than the one that was produced in their record 35-7 defeat to the “old foe” at Twickenham a year later. They were worn down in the end in both games, but their forwards fronted for long parts of both games and the team as a whole fronted the physical Bok onslaught.

While the final whistle of both games induced a feeling of ecstasy in the Boks and their supporters, most of what was experienced by South Africans across the 160 minutes of rugby would have been frustration. They were behind for most of the game in Johannesburg and they were behind in Cape Town until near the 50th minute.

Protect possession

In both games they were below par in several facets of play, and that is ultimately why their 2-0 victory in the miniseries is such an achievement. For with new coaches in the management team, and what Tony Brown has brought to the group as attack coach in particular still being embedded, the Boks are still experiencing growing pains.

In Cape Town and Ellis Park they played a lot looser in the first half than would have been expected from a Bok team against the All Blacks in the past. In the second game their inability to protect their possession led to several turnover penalties and the way they were outplayed at the breakdowns was an understandable concern for coach Rassie Erasmus afterwards.

In both there appeared to be a reset at the halfway point.

Yet while their tendency to overplay at times and play too much in their own half led to them struggling to get into the games and assert their dominance, that they stuck to the path they have chosen was a positive. Evolution, in the Darwinian sense and the rugby one, does not happen overnight.

And that the Boks do need to evolve their game to the point that they can match the Kiwis at their own game when it is necessary should be self-evident. The Boks are not cancelled out in the physical battle often, but when they are, such as in the first half of the Durban Ireland Test, they do need more to their game.

Indeed, one of the reasons the All Blacks have in the post-isolation years turned around the lead the Boks held in the pre-isolation era regarding head-to-head confrontations was the South Africans have been slow to adapt. They’ve won more World Cups than anyone else, a feat that demands a certain kind of rugby, but New Zealand have dominated the in-between years, as reflected by the many more Rugby Championship and Tri-Nations trophies they have won.

It used to be said that a key to the Kiwi success was that their forwards had better handling skills than the Boks, and the respective error rates in these two games reflected that. No 8 Jasper Wiese is a great player but he lacks the finesse and softer skills of his direct opponent. And it isn’t just him.

But just like the Bok defence improved and adjusted between the first game and the second, so the Bok skills and the attacking game will improve if they continue with their focus. The growing pains are inevitable. That the Boks could still beat the All Blacks while experiencing those growing pains was what made the past two weeks such a triumph for SA rugby.