NO SMALL FEAT

CHESLIN KOLBE celebrates scoring the first of his two tries for South Africa against Italy in the Rugby World Cup Pool B clash at Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa, Japan, yesterday. The Springboks won 49-3, with victory moving them closer to a play-off berth.

WHILE he was happy with their 49-3 drubbing of Italy in their must-win fixture, Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus says their performance wasn’t “World Cup-winning standard yet”.

The Boks produced a strong second-half effort to completely put the Italians out of the game after leading 17-3 at the break, and a red card to Italy prop Andrea Lovotti made it even easier for Erasmus’ men to run away with it as they scored seven tries to nil.

It was a top forward performance by the

Boks, and the

Azzurri could consider themselves lucky that uncontested scrums were ordered for the remaining 60 minutes of the match after both their tighthead props left the field (although what led to it looked all too convenient for the Italians) as the Springboks pretty much ruined them in the shoving battle early on.

If the Boks had lost this game, their play-off hopes would have gone up in smoke, and Erasmus said he’s happy they could secure the win.

“We were clinical. They’re a great contesting team at line-outs, I thought line-outs were great, I thought scrums were great,” he said after the match in Shizuoka.

“Our discipline was terrible in the first half. We conceded six or seven penalties when we were defending but otherwise the defence was great.

“Overall, not a bad performance but obviously not World Cup-winning standard yet.

“I’m just happy. This was a crunch game for us. It looked easy but it was a fairly slippery game for us.

“In the beginning we were a bit worried. That red card (for Lovotti) obviously cost them because there were stages when they almost came back into the game.

“When they got that red card it was quite easy for us after that.”

The Boks will face Canada in their last Pool B game, and Erasmus added that they’re now fully in play-off mode.

“The boys are obviously now ready for the play-offs. Our team understand that we’re under pressure and we’ve accepted that now and we’re going to live by that now for the next couple of weeks.

“We’ll get used to that after a while. Now the next challenge, then the next challenge.

“Well done to our boys, they did handle it well today.”