The Airlink Pumas dug deep and showed what their captain Willie Engelbrecht referred to “as a lot of dog” to overcome the Sanlam Boland Kavaliers 20-15 in a hard fought and bruising Carling Currie Cup match in Wellington on Sunday.
The visitors arrived in the Cape with a singular mission - after losing at home to the Hollywoodbets Sharks XV and then getting outplayed by the Fidelity ADT Lions in Johannesburg, a win to get their campaign on track was a non-negotiable. They knew at the Boland fortress that would require bravery and impeccable discipline plus a physical and organised defensive effort.
That was what they produced, with their impressive line-speed making it hard for the hosts to get their impressive attacking game going, and their willingness to compete at and contest every single breakdown enabled them to prevent Boland from getting the momentum they managed in their good wins over the last two Sundays over first the Vodacom Bulls XV and then the DHL Stormers XXIII.
BOLAND CONSPIRED AGAINST THEMSELVES
Let it be said too though that while the Pumas deserved their win just for the massive effort they put in, and their celebrations after the final whistle showed how much it meant to both the players and the coaching staff, Boland also conspired against themselves.
The heart of where it went wrong for the previously unbeaten team was their discipline. Whereas they had been so disciplined against the Stormers, in this game they lost the plot, conceding no less than 12 penalties in the first half. With that sort of help, the Pumas couldn’t help but have the edge when it came to the territory battle in that opening 40 minutes.
The Boland lineouts were also all over the place, and that is putting it lightly. When you get the ball back from your own lineout throws on fewer occasions than you concede it to the opposition, which was the stat until quite late in the game, you are going to struggle to win the game.
Looking at it that way, Boland actually did quite well to come so close, and they may well have won the game were it not for some inexplicable decision making when it came to what to do with penalties. The two kickable penalty opportunities that were turned down in the first half could maybe be forgiven, although they did make a difference to the end result, but the failure to kick for posts when they trailed by eight points with nine minutes remaining was a very poor decision.
To win the game Boland needed more than a try, and a three pointer, which was there for the taking, would have put the hosts within five points of the Pumas, and would have had eight minutes to chase the winning converted try. As it turned out they did eventually kick for posts, but by the time that kick came to reduce the deficit to five there were little over two minutes left on the clock.
Faced with such a small window to attack with, Boland lacked composure and their whole effort was aptly summed up when they tapped back untidily when they threw into the last lineout of the match and the Pumas came through to dispossess them and then play down the clock.
FLEURS STOOD TALL FOR VISITORS
It required a lot of grunt from the Pumas to win the game, but there were also some moments of attacking brilliance, none more so than from their flyhalf Nevaldo Fleurs, who scored an excellent try early in the second half to turn a 10-5 halftime lead into a 17-5 lead after 42 minutes and from there Boland were really up against it as they chased the game.
Fleurs had kicked a sixth minute penalty to give his team the early 3-0 lead, a lead that should have been cancelled out by Boland just kicking their own attempts but unfortunately for them they had other ideas and it was eventually to cost them. Boland’s indiscipline included two yellow cards, although in fairness both of them said more about the flaws in the laws around the tackle than they did about the crimes that were committed.
In the first, Kwanda Dimaza did clip Engelbrecht’s chin in the tackle but the No 8 looked to be falling into it, with Dimaza also dipping to complete the tackle, while nebulous would also be a good word to use to describe the offence that later in the half saw a yellow card shown to the Boland fullback James Tedder.
It was while down to 14 men when Dimaza was off the field that Boland produced their best attacking sequences of the first half, and flyhalf Chris Smit put in a perfect cross kick after a series of direct drives to the line onto wing Xavier Mitchell, who was unmarked over the line and just needed to catch the ball and dot down to make it 5-3 after 25 minutes.
The Pumas’ box kicking strategy finally paid off for them four minutes later, with scrumhalf Thomas Bursey running in the try at the left corner after taking the tap back from his own hoisted kick. Fleurs’ angled conversion accounted for the visiting team’s five point lead (10-5) at the break.
CONDEMNING BOLAND TO CATCH UP WAS PIVOTAL TO RESULT
Fleurs’ early second half try was pivotal in dictating how the rest of a stop start game flowed, as the Pumas would have been spurred on by the 12 point advantage as they resisted a series of mauling drives from Boland (when they found their lineout jumpers).
Eventually one of those did pay off, with Dayan van der Westhuizen dotting down in the 50th minute to bring his team back within five with Tedder’s conversion. After that it was mainly Boland doing the attacking and applying the pressure, but they were stymied by errors, most notably their lineout malfunctions, and when the Pumas elected to kick a penalty to posts on what in the second half was a rare incursion into Boland territory, they set up an eight point buffer that was going to be hard for the hosts to erase.
JJ Scheepers, the lock who did some yeoman work for the Pumas in the lineout, was yellow carded in the second half but Boland were unable to capitalise on their 15 against 14 advantage for those 10 minutes and will look back with regret on the stat that showed that they had more than 11 set pieces inside the Pumas 22 without converting to a sufficient degree.
Scores
Airlink Pumas 20 - Tries: Thomas Bursey and Nevaldo Fleurs; Conversions: Nevaldo Fleurs 2; Penalties: Nevaldo Fleurs 2. Sanlam Boland Kavaliers 15 - Tries: Xavier Mitchell and Dayan van der Westhuizen; Conversion: James Tedder; Penalty: Ashlon Davids.