It is often how you end a game that determines the momentum that takes you into the next game and while there has been a lot of talk about Ireland’s injuries, they will take the confidence of having finished the first test the stronger of the two teams into Saturday’s Durban decider.
Ireland defence coach Simon Easterby, the former England loose-forward, admits that Tony Brown has brought a different dimension to the Springbok attacking game, and his team was caught out a bit early on. However, he was encouraged with how his team dealt with the challenges posed by the width the Boks brought to their attacking game after they got away with only a five point deficit at halftime.
“They put the ball into space, which we anticipated, but we didn’t deal with that as well as we should have done,” said Easterby after a training session at Northwood College in Durban North.
“Sometimes, a team will find a way to get into space. We didn’t shut that down in the way that we would normally do. There are plenty of fixes for that, but essentially, we have to be better on both sides of the ball, especially in the first half.
“(But) as the game went on we grew massively into it and we finished stronger. We will take a lot of confidence from that. You can’t give a side like South Africa the type of space that we allowed because they have too many quality players to put you under pressure and take advantage of that space.”
Easterby indicated that the way to blunt the Bok threats was still the same as it has always been - you need to stop them from getting momentum and onto a roll with their power game which is now supplemented with more incisive and organised attacking ploys. That latter part has been brought by Brown as the Bok attack coach, but Easterby believes the Boks had been heading in that direction for a while.
“The Springbok ability for them to play to that sort of space, width has always been there,” Easterby said.
“They can play a couple of game styles with their forward pack, the ability to win the gain-line and the collisions in playing a little bit tighter. But in the last couple of years since we have been playing them they have some backs that can play with space, play with footwork and have that kicking game. And Tony Brown’s inclusion adds another dimension to the way they can attack.”
BROUGHT ATTACKING STRUCTURE
Certainly Brown has brought structure to the attack, something that was starting to happen under the now England defence coach Felix Jones when he was running that aspect of the Boks, but on the evidence of the Loftus game, won 27-20 by the hosts, it has gone up a few levels. The Bok potency from transitional play is well known, but they are now heading in the direction of being able to be more possession based if they need to be.
Indeed, if the plan goes smoothly and reaches fruition, South African fans can stand by for their team to win games by bigger scores going forward than was the case when the Boks played a more risk averse game by keeping the ball in narrow channels closer to the forwards. As Ireland No 8 Caelyn Doris put it to reporters after the Loftus test, they have added new threats out wide while retaining their ability to create havoc by peeling around the corner.
Easterby believes though the priority remains that you have to front the Boks physically and not let them get momentum by winning the collisions.
“If you lose a few collisions, you are on the back foot and it is a bit of a spiral of negativity. You have to try and create something within that, whether that is the communications, whether that is individuals working within that working a little bit smarter and finding a way to find solutions.
“It is probably a combination of things that we didn’t quite get right in that first 20 minutes in Pretoria when they got some decent gains from us. After halftime, we fixed a lot of those things, and we were much more difficult to break down. I thought in the second half, we were much better on both sides of the ball.”