The Springboks had more possession and territory, made more metres, and won more rucks and mauls than the All Blacks, and yet South Africa lost 23-13 to New Zealand in their Yokohama opener.
It leaves the team’s defence coach Jacques Nienaber working overtime to ensure there is no repeat of the errors should the sides meet again in the Rugby World Cup 2019 final.
To reach that point they have to win five straight games, starting with Saturday’s Pool B clash against Namibia at the City of Toyota Stadium.
The All Blacks adopted traditional South Africa tactics with their kicking that surprised Nienaber (pictured).
“We had an idea that they would probably kick a bit more – and they did. I probably didn’t expect them to kick that much but we did expect a lot of attacking kicks,” Nienaber said.
“Out of the 21 kicks that we had to defend, there were about eight that I would say they had the upper hand. Unfortunately, two were catastrophic (that led to tries). But the others, I thought, we handled fairly well.
“I told Rassie (Erasmus) it was always a benefit playing a semi-final type of game in your pool stage, as I thought we learnt a lot out of it.
“For us, it was a great match in terms of tactics, physicality, getting challenged in all departments, mentally, the build-up during the week, the enormity of the game.
“You know if you play the All Blacks and you make two errors, it’s 14 points. We made three consecutively – and it was 17 points.
“It’s nice to play a game like that where if you know you make a mistake, they will punish you.”
Uruguay’s 30-27 victory over Fiji on Wednesday proved that the Tier 2 nations are making progress and Namibia beat the South Americans 30-28 in Montevideo in June.
Nienaber said the goal for the Boks on Saturday was the performance rather than the score.
“We are trying to develop our game across the board – attack, kicking, our mental approach, our work ethic during the week,” he said.
“It’s not a case of saying if we concede just three points we will be happy with that or, if we concede 30, we will be disappointed.
“We want to work on the things we lacked against New Zealand and improve in those areas. We want to build our game, improve the skill set of the individual player.
“Seeing an improvement where we want to see improvement will be more of an achievement for us than the margin of victory.”
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Source – BBC
