Boks maintain momentum against Wallabies
PORT ELIZABETH: Wing Aphiwe Dyantyi scored a try in the opening 25 seconds as South Africa kept up its Rugby Championship momentum with a 2312 victory over Australia at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium yesterday.
The Springboks dominated the early part of the game, but then had to weather a ferocious assault from Australia, which was seeking a first victory on South African soil since 2011.
Halfback Faf de Klerk also scored a try for the Boks and first fiveeighth Handre Pollard kicked two conversions and three penalties as the South Africans backed up their stunning 3634 victory in New Zealand a fortnight ago with another win.
The Wallabies’ tries came via centre Reece Hodge and halfback Will Genia, but despite seeing much of the ball, they lacked an incisive edge in attack and slipped to a fourth defeat in five games in the competition.
‘‘We took our foot off the pedal after a good start,’’ Boks captain Siya Kolisi said at the postmatch presentation.
‘‘We have got to be more patient when we get to the 22. There is a lot more for us to improve on before we get better. ‘‘But we will always take a win. ‘‘The guts and stuff that doesn’t require talent, we showed that. We defended for so long. We didn’t have enough ball, but we scrapped until the end.’’
The Boks grabbed their opening try from the kickoff as Australia first fiveeighth Kurtley Beale tried an ambitious skippass on his own tryline and Dyanti was able to collect and score.
The Boks added a second try when Pollard slipped the tackle off hooker Folau Fainga’a and set De Klerk away to canter over.
But from their first meaningful attack in the Bok 22, Hodge slid home in the corner for the visiting side after a fine skippass from Genia.
They had a second score minutes later as an exchange of passes between wing Marika Koroibete and Genia saw the latter run in.
Two Pollard penalties extended the home advantage to 2012 at the break, before the No 10 added another early in the second period.
Australia dominated after that and, when referee Jerome Garcia ran out of patience with repeated infringements from the home side, Dyanti was sent to the sinbin just past the hourmark.
But the home side fought bravely on defence and kept the Australians scoreless for the remainder of the game to secure a scrappy victory.
‘‘I’m proud of our guys. They were a bit down after a shaky start,’’ Australia captain Michael Hooper said.
‘‘South Africa put us under a lot of pressure early. There was a lot of running rugby and it was a good test match, just not the result we wanted.
‘‘We pushed hard to get the yellow card [for Dyanti] and when we got it, we needed to capitalise and we couldn’t do that. It was a brilliant defensive performance from the South Africans.’’