Boks got the balance right in beating the All Blacks

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber has put the fact that his team played more ball in hand rugby in their thrilling 31-29 win over the All Blacks in their final Castle Lager Rugby test of 2021 on the Gold Coast down to the different space picture that their opponents presented his players.

The Boks have been the target of ongoing, carping criticism ever since they beat the British and Irish Lions in the iconic series that was completed seven weeks ago, with many labelling them boring and saying they were anti-rugby because of the way they relied so heavily on contestable kicking.

However, in the match at CBUS Stadium, like in the Rugby World Cup final against England in the World Cup final nearly two years ago, the Boks appeared to change their strategy by attacking more with ball in hand.

While they still kicked 28 times, they had more running metres in the game than the All Blacks, which doesn't happen often against the Kiwis.

Like was the case in Yokohama though, according to Nienaber it wasn’t so much a change of tactics but an example of what he has always said: His team will attack the space that is presented.

“I said it last week, you only play what is presented to you,” said an elated Nienaber after the game that ends a three-game losing streak for the World Cup champions.

“If the All Blacks present 14 players in the front line like they did last week, then the space is not in the front line. Tonight they dropped more players back to cover the back field (because of the Boks' kicking game that worked in Townsville last week), and that gave us the picture that there was more space for us to play into with ball in hand.

“There’s not a lot of space when you play games between the No 1, No 2 and No 3 teams in the world but you can’t cover everything, so there will always somewhere that space is presented. If you can see space you must attack it through running, passing or kicking, depending on where it is. We are trying to find the balance to that and today we got much closer to getting that balance right. We are still not quite there yet.”

NARROW MARGINS

It was certainly a big step forward to finding the right balance for the Boks, and Nienaber admitted that perhaps the previous week there hadn’t been enough use of opportunities to attack off turnover ball.

Ultimately that could have been what denied the Boks victory in Townsville, where there were just two points separating the teams.

“Last week there were opportunities to run off turnovers out of our 22 and we didn’t use them but we learned from that,” said the Bok coach.

“We are not at the level we were at in 2019 (when we won the World Cup) yet as we did not play any international rugby in 2020. We are not where we want to be just yet.”

Given though that the Boks won the series against the British and Irish Lions and only really had the second game against the Wallabies in Brisbane as a blow-out on their Australasian tour that came at the end of a long and challenging winter for them, they can feel pleased with their comeback season to international rugby after a 19-month hiatus because of the pandemic.

“There are very narrow margins when you talk about games between the top three teams in the world,” said Nienaber.

“We were lucky tonight in that we managed to force a penalty right at the end to win it, otherwise it was anybody's game, and they did the same to us last week. In our first game against Australia it was a similar story. Like in the New Zealand game, we presented them with an opportunity right at the end. All of these games could have gone the other way.”

ALL BLACKS WERE ON THE ROPES

The most recent one really shouldn’t have gone against the Boks though, for New Zealand did well to resist a long period in the third quarter where Siya Kolisi’s men really appeared to have them on the ropes.

During that period the Boks really should have put their opponents away and had it not been for Elton Jantjies's late penalty, that might have been the lament of the Boks and their fans afterwards.

All Black coach Ian Foster admitted his team was in trouble at that point.

“The Boks had a superb attitude and they carried the ball hard and moved us around and we were challenged in many ways,” said Foster afterwards.

“In the third quarter they were really good and they had us flustered. It was a tribute to the players that we found a way to hang in there and still be in a position to win it in the last quarter. I thought we took our opportunities well early in the game and got some good tries. But we didn’t manage to win and maybe we didn't manage the game as well as we should have at the end and that shows we still have a bit of learning to do.”

PROPERLY CHALLENGED BY A TESTING OPPONENT

Foster added though that while being challenged properly by a foe that could probably test their game had been good for his charges and perhaps a bit of a wake-up call before they head to Europe to play northern hemisphere opposition, winning the Rugby Championship had been a massive step forward for his team.

Nienaber will reflect on a Rugby Championship campaign that might have been.

The 30-17 loss to the Wallabies at Suncorp Stadium a fortnight ago was the only match where his team was outplayed, and they could easily have won the two games they lost narrowly.

Having lost two games they probably should have won probably made it even more imperative for the Boks to get across the line in the return clash against the All Blacks.

“This win will give us some momentum to take with us on our end-of-year tour,” said Nienaber.

The Boks will head home now for a much-needed two-week break before they are scheduled to go into camp again at the start of the build-up to the end-of-year tour that starts in the first week of November.