Advertisement

Slow poison does its magic for Boks

rugby10 September 2023 17:55| © SuperSport
By:Gavin Rich
Share

Scotland’s passionate resistance to pressure in the first half may have had South Africans nervous for a while but in the end the Springbok power took its toll as an early second-half gear shift made sure of an emphatic 18-3 victory in their opening Rugby World Cup game in Marseille on Sunday.

The Boks will have been mightily relieved to get off to a winning start as they’ve spoken a lot about the fact that their participation in the so-called group of death, Pool B, effectively put them on a knockout footing from the off.

By picking up the points for the win though, and with Ireland the only other team in the group really capable of beating them, a lot of the pressure is now off, with the big game against Ireland on 23 September likely to be about seeing which team finishes first and therefore plays New Zealand instead of France in the quarterfinal stage in mid-October.

Not that the Boks will worry too much about that right now, they should just be happy that they won against a dangerous opponent and in doing so erased much of the question mark that had been hanging over them getting beyond the pool phase.

UNDER PRESSURE

The Scots were under pressure in the first quarter and the Boks looked like they were systematically suffocating them but Siya Kolisi's men couldn’t take full advantage and convert their dominance into points.

And the longer they stayed in it on the scoreboard, so the more the Scots found the confidence to stand up to the feared South African physicality and forward power.

After weathering the early storm, in the second quarter Scotland started to come back into it and it took some great South African defence to prevent them from scoring on a few occasions.

Instead though they had to rely on a Finn Russell penalty on the stroke of halftime for their only points of the half.

But those points did come at a stage where it could have proved a big psychological blow, particularly given that it meant that while the Boks had been dominant for most of the half, they hadn’t drawn away after Manie Libbok had got the board ticking over in the first quarter with two penalties.

At 6-3 down, the Scots were still well in the game.

CLEARLY READ THE RIOT ACT AT HALFTIME

However, Bok coach Jacques Nienaber clearly read the riot act during the break because the Boks came out playing with ferocious intensity at the start of the second half.

Whereas in the first half the Scots had stood up well in the forward battle, in the second the Boks drummed out the truth behind the old slow poison philosophy, meaning that with time the power and intensity of the onslaught would just take its toll.

 And it sure did, with the scrum, which gave away two important penalties just before halftime, being completely dominant in the second.

Throughout the game the Scottish lineout was creaky, and that remained the case through to the end.

Libbok had a chance to draw his team back into a six-point lead just two minutes into the half but missed his third kick of the night (the Boks missed out on eight points in all when it came to Libbok’s kicking at the posts). Admittedly it was from long range.

The Scots had scarcely got over their good luck though when they were in proper trouble, with a sustained attack in which the Boks on several occasions breached the gainline eventually led to big Pieter-Steph du Toit powering his way over for his eighth try.

Libbok failed with the relatively easy conversion but the Boks suddenly had daylight between them on the Scots on the scoreboard.

GAME OVER AS A CONTEST WITH HALF AN HOUR TO GO

And they put more of that daylight between the teams a few minutes later when Libbok made up for his errors from the tee and showed why it’s becoming increasingly difficult to just assume he should make way for Handre Pollard should the 2019 World Cup hero return as his pinpoint cross kick put Kurt-Lee Arendse in for the second try.

Scrumhalf Faf de Klerk took over the kicking duties for the conversion and slotted it from the angle to make it a 15 point game, meaning that the fifth ranked team in the world needed to score at least three times in order to pull off an upset win.

Against a team as good defensively as the Boks, it was effectively game over as a contest with just under half an hour remaining

The Boks could well have added to that advantage on a few occasions after that and it was more often them that looked likely to score than their brave but ultimately well beaten opponents.

Scotland have a break now before resuming action while the Boks look forward to what should be a much easier game next Sunday against Romania.

They will go forward comfortable with the knowledge that it is no longer about Pool survival for them but about who they play in the quarterfinal.

SCORES

South Africa 18 - Tries: Pieter-Steph du Toit and Kurt-Lee Arendse; Conversion: Faf de Klerk; Penalties: Manie Libbok 2.

Scotland 3 - Penalty: Finn Russell.

Advertisement