The Springboks showed no appetite for a contest in a humiliating opening quarter of their loss to the All Blacks on Saturday, according to MARK KEOHANE.
The Kiwis built their Rugby Championship win on a sensational opening 20 minutes, during which they dominated the collisions and the kicking game to claim all the momentum, and forced the Boks into errors to open up a 17-point gap.
During this period, most of South Africa’s key players went missing, with soft moments on defence and rushed decision-making contributing to their mire, and ultimately end in a 35-20 defeat.
In his TimesLIVE column, Keohane breaks down how the world champions were “humbled and hammered”, and ironically at a venue called Mount Smart Stadium because the Boks were “everything but smart”.
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“The strength of the world-champion Springboks is their set piece, their discipline and their physicality in the collision,” he writes. “Whatever they put in the water in Auckland, it doesn’t agree with the Springbok players because this squad of Boks have never looked as impotent, bewildered and battered as the Boks did in the first half.
“This is supposedly the Bok ‘A’ team but the last time I saw a heavyweight look so bemused and confused was when Anthony Joshua was being clubbed into submission by Andy Ruiz Junior.
“The Boks, in that first 45 minutes, looked overwhelmed and underdone. They were desperately poor, but losing to the All Blacks in Auckland, where the home team has not lost in 57 Tests since 1994, is no crime.
“What was a crime was the lack of Bok player appetite for the contest in the first 30 minutes. This can be fixed by the World Cup, even if they can never get back that humiliating opening quarter.”
Photo: @Springboks/Twitter
