When a twenty point thumping feels like a loss.
I rarely listen to post-match interviews, but made an exception this week and I thought De Villiers summed things up very well he said that he can't believe he is disappointed with beating the aussies by that margin. The record book will show that South Africa one the game by twenty clear points, those who recall the match in isolation will say that it was a non-contest almost from the kick-off and yet somehow the result is disappointing. In the context of the rugby championship the failure to secure the bonus point is a real gut shot.
South Africa started the game "positively", they ran wider from deeper than we are used to seeing and it worked a treat. The wallabies made some mistakes with discipline and with poor kicks, but the real reason for the early blow-out was their inability to deal with the pressure being applied. The Kirchner try illustrated the idea of applying pressure very well I thought. On receiving the kick-off they set up a nice little maul to get onto the front foot and then spread the ball in such a manner that Tomane was forced to make difficult decision in defence, a decision he got wrong and seconds later Kirchner dotted down under the posts.
Sadly, confusingly or annoyingly South Africa moved away from what was working soon after. I see some people on the internet are saying that the Springboks went back into their shells and stopped taking risks. I don't think that is the case, rather they were taking the wrong risks. On a number of occasions I thought we had guys attempting low percentage kicks for territory which either conceded possession or simply went straight out on the full when running the ball would have made more sense.
With the exception of Du Preez, most of the players were workmanlike rather than good. Even Du Preez was only good compared to other scrumhalfs, I still think he has two or three levels in reserve.
Where does this game leave the wallabies? I am not going to patronize the Wallabies and say they played well, but I have seen them play a lot worse over the course of the season. In the end the game reminded me of that comic book fight where you have a big kid holding off a little kid while the little kid flails about hopelessly.
While on the subject of flailing about, the teams really don't seem to like each other at all. There is nothing specific, but the game had an underlying nastiness which has strange to see.
While on the subject, I don't care what Van der Merwe's intention was or what the judicial commission finds, I just hope he gets the boot. No matter how well he plays, and he was good in the opening stanza, he is always good for a couple of braindead penalties or actions like this weekend that sees him undo all the good that he is doing. Penalties, even yellow cards, will always happen, but unforced penalties invites unnecessary pressure onto the team which cancels out tons of good work.