These Boks really need to pull up their socks

FOLLOWING the Springboks’ 28-26 Rugby Championship defeat against Australia in Gold Coast at the weekend, hooker Malcolm Marx said that it was hard to identify positives.

Granted, Marx, who came on to replace Bongi Mbonambi, was largely referring to how a detailed review would be needed before he could really give an insightful answer to that question.

But there really were not too many positives.

In fact, the performance of Marx off the bench was one of the few. He made a massive impact when he came on in the third quarter, getting over the advantage line and scoring two tries from driving mauls.

Speaking after the game, Marx said: “It’s hard to say at the moment (what the positives were), it’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

“We will have to go and look where we can improve, there is always room for improvement. We will look at the detail tomorrow (Monday) and work on that for next week’s game.

“There were scrums where we felt we were dominant, but a different picture was maybe painted to the ref … maybe that’s not what he saw.

“Being a Springbok, I am always going to sit here and say that we were dominant. So maybe the pictures that we saw and the pictures he saw were two different things.

“We will have a look and work on it and see where we can improve. We will work just as hard this week as we did last week.”

Naturally, given the flow of the game and the result, there will also be players who will want to step it up when and if they face the Wallabies on Saturday. Here are three of them.

Lukhanyo Am

This guy doesn’t get much wrong, but his game was way off at the weekend.

Apart from his first-half blunder – where he lost control of the ball in the Wallabies’ in-goal area when all he had to was place the ball for the try and how he lost the ball forward early in the second half when there was some space in front of him – his time he spent on the ball didn’t amount to much.

Given his defensive mastery, it’s not too hard, though not really justified, to put some blame on him.

Willie le Roux

It certainly wasn’t all bad. He did well to field some tough high balls early on, but from there on, especially on attack, it just went south.

While no one starting player was an absolute standout in that game, some of Le Roux’s errors and blandness on attack made it easy for the mind to drift to a chance for Aphelele Fassi, even if it’s not in a starting role, perhaps just a significant run off the bench.

Siya Kolisi

In the time he was sin-binned for a tip tackle in the first quarter, the Wallabies scored a try, but to be fair, ill-discipline was an issue all round.

Kolisi will want to impose himself more physically in the next game, though, not just him, but most of the pack.