HARD LESSON Irish blow away the Springboks
| Ireland boss the Springboks in most aspects of the game to give the South Africans a wake-up call
THE Springboks suffered their first defeat in the northern hemisphere for four years following a disjointed and poor performance against a fired up Ireland last night.
After beating the All Blacks last month there was a feel-good factor about the Springboks, but all that came crashing down in the face of a skilled performance from the Irish.
Ireland delivered a victory that was as stunning as it was unexpected. But it was also thoroughly deserved.
The only area of the match where the Irish were second best was in the scrum, and there were too few of those to have a massive impact on the outcome.
The home team were tactically superior, which started with their clever kicking game where flyhalf Johnny Sexton pulled the strings expertly.
Earlier in the week Bok captain Jean de Villiers said players could only play themselves out of World Cup contention and some will be nervous about their futures after this result.
“This wasn’t a performance worthy of the Springbok jersey,” De Villiers said.
“The things we could work on prior to the game such as scrums, lineouts and tactical kicking, we did well.
“But things like catching and passing we couldn’t do and that was a concern. You have to give Ireland some credit because they played well.
“This has been a step back for us, though. We as players need to take responsibility for this defeat.”
Scrumhalf Francois Hougaard had a night to forget, twice knocking on close to the line with the Boks on the brink of scoring. By the time he was withdrawn the Boks were 10 points down.
Adriaan Strauss’s 66thminute yellow card for taking out Irish fullback Rob Kearney in the air didn’t help with the game still there to be won.
While he was off the field Ireland added another 10 unanswered points including a try for wing Tommy Bowe. At 29-10 down it was a shambles and even a late JP Pietersen consolation try couldn’t gloss over arguably the worst performance of the Heyneke Meyer era.
South Africa’s mistakes never ceased even though they enjoyed long periods inside Irish territory
Marcell Coetzee and Eben Etzebeth were willing carriers and the scrum was excellent, but it mattered little when the net re- sult was an inability to put points on the board from the few chances they created.
De Villiers spurned two kickable penalties early on, preferring to go to the corners with Victor Matfield’s lineout superiority. Matfield did his part but the rolling maul couldn’t get going. Ireland defended it well when they did engage and at other times they simply didn’t engage at all, sending loosehead Jack McGrath around the side to attack the ball.
With no maul formed because Ireland hadn’t engaged, technically there was no offside line, which McGrath exploited. It was a canny bit of coaching by Schmidt and it twice stopped the Boks close to the line.
By contrast, Ireland showed how the rolling maul should work when they scattered the Bok defence with the first lineout of the second half.
Flank Rhys Ruddock burst through a hole, raising serious questions about the Springbok defcnce. The Boks finally succeeded with a rolling maul for Coetzee to score, but the flames were doused and Ireland deservedly claimed a famous win.