The most positive point about the Springboks’ win in the opening match of their tour at Murrayfield on Sunday was that it was a long way from a perfect performance and yet they won by 17 away from home against one of the better Scotland teams we have seen in recent years.
That there were so many areas where the Boks can improve as they head to the big game of the tour against England in London on Saturday and yet won so convincingly should give them confidence.
When a team hasn’t played for six weeks, and then 11 changes are made on top of that from the last time they did play, you expect some rust. There was plenty of that, with a plethora of handling errors preventing the Boks from picking up and sustaining the momentum that their physical superiority demanded.
Much of that was down to the way the Scots attacked the breakdowns, thus forcing scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse to operate under constant pressure. Both Grant Williams and Cobus Reinach tend to be more incisive and quicker in clearing the rucks than Hendrikse is so it will be interesting to see what Rassie Erasmus does when it comes to choosing who wears the No 9 next week.
It wasn’t just around the fringes though that the Boks struggled to hold their passes, there were also some inexplicable lapses at the back. It enabled the Scots to stay in the game, particularly during the 20-minute period when they were down to 14 men after the red carding of Scott Cummings.
The Cummings incident provided an example of why the 20-minute red card is a good idea. It would have been debatable to many pundits that it was a yellow card, let alone a red. But at least, because the new laws around cards mean a banished player is replaced after 20 minutes, the game wasn’t ruined because of it.
The Scots would have felt unlucky, but at the same time they managed the period they were down to 14 well, as did the Boks when later on their two-try hero Makazole Mapimpi was carded. The early line-outs were also a shambles, with two of the first three going against the throw, and even the one that saw Thomas du Toit burst through the Scotland defence for the third Bok try was far from perfect. That is an area the Boks will work on in the coming week.
Yet that is something the Boks can sort out, and while they may have been guilty of overplaying a bit, they will know after this performance that their old staples of strong scrumming and suffocating, physical defence can still be relied upon. It was what made sure of the victory in a game where the Scots did show a lot of endeavour, particularly in the third quarter when they dominated possession but couldn’t breach the Bok defence.
Twickenham
The success or failure of this tour will hinge on what happens at Twickenham and even though England retained their habit of losing narrowly at the weekend, the Boks need to be wary of their opponents.
Few would have expected England to lose to an Australian team that has slipped so badly on the world rankings, particularly not on their home ground. As so often happens when it comes to England national teams in major sports, the loss elicited an acerbic reaction from the English rugby media that contrasted with the overdose of praise and purple prose that followed their third successive defeat to the All Blacks.
But you don’t have to go too far back to when England last stood up from a disappointing defeat to win when they have been written off. It happened earlier this year when England lost their fourth game in a row to Scotland. They were written off when they played Ireland in their next game, and yet they produced an intense and focused effort that saw them deny the eventual Six Nations winners a much sought after Grand Slam.
And South Africans won’t have forgotten England’s last game against the Boks either. They were largely written off for the World Cup semifinal in Paris last October, with their advance to that point in the competition coming at the expense of much weaker teams than the ones the Boks had played and with many of the England performances being underwhelming.
These days the Boks have a target on their backs no matter who they play against, but the loss to the Wallabies should have further strengthened the resolve of England to turn around the mood that will have enveloped the English rugby public after that result.
England are much like some Bok teams of the past — they like being underdogs. It makes them more dangerous. The Boks need to be closer to their A-game than they were at Murrayfield.
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