History tells us there’s not too much to choose between the Boks and All Blacks. Contests over the years have been generally been close, but on Saturday at Ellis Park it was the Boks who got up and won. Rugby writer Jacques van der Westhuyzen highlights key aspects that helped the Boks to their first win against their greatest foes in six matches
Selections
Injuries have hit the Boks hard this year, making selection decisions so much tougher, but Heyneke Meyer must be commended for getting it right at the back-end of the Rugby Championship.
Duane Vermeulen has been massive at No8 throughout the competition and the fact that he was prepared to put himself in further danger after picking up a rib injury the week before shows how badly he wanted to play, and win. It was a gamble to pick him, but it paid off handsomely.
The inclusion of Bismarck du Plessis, ahead of Adriaan Strauss, was also a master-stroke, the former playing his best Test this year. Francois Hougaard has also delivered in the last two weeks and he was again hugely influential on Saturday, while Handré Pollard showed he is a star of the future. Picking Pat Lambie ahead of Morné Steyn also shows Meyer is far from the conservative everyone thinks he is. Jan Serfontein has also developed into a powerhouse outside centre.
B.M.T
The Boks have come close to beating the All Blacks in recent years, but they’ll be the first to admit the world champions have been a step ahead of them. The fans, though, will always heap pressure on the team and expect them to win. On Saturday, in front of 62000 fans, the pressure to produce a victory was massive. The Boks got out of the blocks quickly and showed they meant business. They played hard, aggressive rugby, but they were also disciplined. They played with maturity and composure and took the opportunities they created. Not once in a stunning first-half performance did they look like losing. They were never intimidated by the All Blacks and they never panicked under some fierce attack by the visitors in the second half. Lambie also showed he’s a man with nerves of steel and more than capable of being a match-winner.
BALL-in-hand
Weather conditions have hampered the Boks’ growth as an attacking outfit this year, rain putting paid to an expansive game in Pretoria, Perth and Wellington. But on a dry field, like Ellis Park was on Saturday, the Boks were able to play the way Meyer wants them to play.
Gone were the box kicks from scrumhalf, gone were the up-and-unders and gone were the aimless kicks downfield. The Boks hung on to the ball, even in their own half, and they were prepared to back themselves to run at the All Blacks. The support play was outstanding, the running lines good and the handling sublime. They just didn’t give the visitors possession in the first half and that’s why they dominated. Under Meyer the Boks have shown they can play as good an attacking game as the All Blacks and the visitors readily admit as much. There were just three handling errors by the Boks over 80 minutes, a quite excellent number when you factor in how often they carried the ball.
DEFENCE
Too often in recent times the Boks have conceded too many tries to the All Blacks. Last year at Ellis Park the Boks scored four tries, but the visitors scored more.
Meyer said his team needed to improve defensively if they were to have a chance of beating the All Blacks and on Saturday showed massive courage to limit their opponents to just three five-pointers. There were moments of weakness in the Bok defensive line, but there were also moments when the Boks stood really tall to deny the visitors.
They scrambled and tackled as if their lives depended on it – and, perhaps for some, their careers did depend on it. The All Blacks threw everything they had at Meyer’s team in the second half and while they scored two tries it could have been more but for some quality tackling across the park.
LUCK
Both Meyer and Steve Hansen concede there is a big element of luck in winning tight matches. One could say the Boks got unlucky in Perth against the Wallabies – Steyn failing to find touch with almost the last kick of the game, allowing Australia to score a match-winning try – while in Wellington three weeks ago the Boks failed to cross the line after being camped in All Blacks’ territory for some time. At Ellis Park, Liam Messam’s shoulder charge on Schalk Burger – which allowed Lambie to step up and slot the penalty – looked perfectly fine in real-time and could easily have been ignored by television producers. It was only some time after the incident, when slowed down and flashed on the big screen, that referee Stuart Barnes was informed of a potential dangerous “hit”. Barnes, too, could have ignored it, deemed it fine … but he didn’t, and the rest is history. - The Star