32-12…. In the early noughties, this might have been a very acceptable losing scoreline against the All Blacks. Then, the team was descending into a period that I would much rather not mention, a period marked with horrors like Kamp Staaldraad, the 53-3 loss at Twickenham to England and the 52-16 loss at Loftus to New Zealand.
32-12…. In the early noughties, this might have been a very acceptable losing scoreline against the All Blacks. Then, the team was descending into a period that I would much rather not mention, a period marked with horrors like Kamp Staaldraad, the 53-3 loss at Twickenham to England and the 52-16 loss at Loftus to New Zealand.
I guess those moments still hurt when mentioned, but the Boks have no excuse for what was an insipid perfomance at Eden Park on Saturday. As Pieter de Villiers had said quite recently, he is "tired of the Soccer World Cup". Well, now that the football showpiece is done and dusted, the eyes of the nation will be firmly fixed on him and his crew in preparation to the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which will be hosted in the land of the long white cloud.
So just why did the Boks get so thoroughly beaten on Saturday?
1) Kick and Chase Tactic
Former Black Caps Captain Martin Crowe once said during the 1992 Cricket World Cup: "You can use the same tactic over and over in limited overs internationals, but you can’t use the same tactic in a test match." As much as it worked like a treat last season, on Saturday it fizzed out and the All Blacks, to their credit, played to their strengths and neutralised the Boks by keeping the ball in play for as long as possible and towards the end of the game actually bossed the lineout, which was a perceived strength of the Boks.
Punts were more or less aimless down the field and the All Blacks back three, with Mils Muliaina most impressive, had learnt from the errors of the 2009 and punished the Boks accordingly with some scintillating counter attacks, one of which led to the first try by Conrad Smith.
2) Ricky Januarie
There was much debate about his selection to the Bok squad, let alone starting the test. For much of the Super 14, he played second fiddle to Dewaldt Duvenhage, so one might have expected Div to follow Allister Coetzee’s reasoning to keep him on the bench. Sadly, he started, and was one of the chief contributors to the team’s demise. The team badly missed Fourie du Preez, who is the main base of the Boks tactical movements.
3) Discipline
A watchword that seems to be eluding Bakkies Botha at the present moment. In the ten minutes he spent in the bin, the All Blacks achieved the vital momentum that they would never relinquish during the game. Just fresh off a four-week ban for a similar offence in the final round-robin game of the Super 14, it would have been expected of Botha to learn from his lessons, but, sadly, it was not a case of once bitten, twice shy. He is the team’s hard man, but in the field, you can only go so far in being hard or being downright dirty. A nine-week suspension is more or less what he deserves.
4) History of big defeats in New Zealand
I don’t know whether people will agree with me on this, especially after the Boks’ 32-29 triumph in Hamilton last year and the groundbreaking, history-making 30-28 win in Dunedin in 2008, but the Boks have a tendency of losing heavily in New Zealand, which points to a lack of character and fight once the home side start to dominate.
Saturday’s result wasn’t the heaviest defeat for the Boks in All Black territory, the 55-35 reverse in 1997 at the same ground will take some beating, but throw in a 41-20 loss in 2002 at Wellington, a 35-17 reverse at the same ground four years later and 33-6 win for the All Blacks a year later in Christchurch, although that was a weakened Bok line up. Yes there been narrow defeats sandwiched between those hidings, 19-11 in 2003, 23-21 in 2004 and 31-27 in 2005, but the fact can’t be hidden that the Boks get pasted in New Zealand.
There is hope though. The Bok team aren’t as bad as they were on Saturday. They can certainly play much better than they did, even though the City of Sails, or to be specific, Westpac Stadium has not been kind to them, having lost their last three games there, with their last win in Wellington being at the old Athletic Park. History, plus an All Blacks side bent on revenge, put the Boks to the sword, but each match day brings new variables, and you’re only as good as your last fixture.
