Luckily the boys didn’t think much of the media reports and proceeded to drive their forward prowess and powerful running game home against the Irish. Ireland at this stage did themselves no favours as they made mistake after mistake, most notably unforced handling errors to take the buzz out of their attack, and of course they did let the big South African ball carriers to have things much their own way. Honestly they seemed a little frantic in these opening exchanges, which seemed only to heap the pressure on.

Better use of runners...

Now I’m not a fan of the one off runner, simple, predictable game plan that we have seen employed so well by the Bulls over the last few years. Sure I believe playing to one’s strengths, and the physical ball carriers that we possess in this country are hard to stop, but I’d like to see more ingenuity around that area. Although we gained momentum on the weekend, it seemed like much the same game plan we employed against New Zealand and Australia, who were more than up to the challenge and thus killed our momentum right there. Basically I would like to see a much better use of those runners in the right ways and positions.

If we make an example of how well Australia use their typical craftiness around the ruck area with Genia running the show (and Gregan is past areas) we can see the way in which we need to move our game forward as a team. In the match when Pienaar ran with the ball a bit and used his skill and size to ask questions of the defense around the ruck areas, it was like glimpsing into the future. Of course that changed as the game wore on and typically the ball was passed from the base to a big runner trying to run through a wall of defenders. Again it worked on the weekend, but it didn’t the whole of the Tri-Nations. I’d love to see Pienaar and all the SA scrumhalves for that matter, carrying the ball to create some width and plying the different runners as options, hence mixing things up a bit and keeping the defense moving around. After creating some momentum from those runners (being played into a bit more space as opposed to trying to bash open a hole) we can then launch from there.

Kirchener was solid

I did think Pienaar was great first game back though, and I’d love it if he stayed in the halfback position and was given the chance to make it his own and developing our attack from there. I was also impressed at just how well our pack dominated on the weekend, not only with ball in hand but how solid our platform was from the lineout and particularly the scrum. Again Ireland let themselves down here, Wales wont be as kind, you saw how they demolished Australia in the scrum.

I wasn’t impressed with our backline however. There was much made of Kirchener playing out of position (which I think was unfair to him) but besides being somewhat anonymous and the one mistake that nearly resulted in an Irish try (you might remember the kick through he failed to fall on) he didn’t let anyone down, and after being put in such a difficult position, being out of position, I actually think he was solid. He was matching up against one of the best centre pairings in world rugby after all.

It’s just that I would have liked to see some bite from the backline. After dominating up front and with the majority of possession I felt as though our backs weren’t quite firing like they would have wanted. Perhaps the new combinations and certainly the weather was to blame, but I thought we could have blown Ireland off the park in the opening periods.

 The Boks...tough is what they do...

And not blowing the Irish away like we needed to allowed them the chance to finally settle that frantic start and really push The Boks at the end of the game. Even being within striking distance! I’m sure the Irish lads are even a bit gutted that they didn’t come away with the victory, as deep into the second half it was anyone’s game.

But when all was said and done it was a good win first up for the Boks, and you could almost see how tangible their ambition was going into the game. Make no mistake the guys are going for a Grand Slam, and they can definitely do it! In fact I think they will. They’ll be ironing out a few mistakes they made and addressing any issues to their game as we speak, and they’ll come out firing against the Welsh this weekend. It’ll be tough for sure, but these are The Boks. And tough is what they do.

All the best and see you all soon

Skeato

P.S. On a side note it was good to see Keegan Daniel and Pat Lambie get their first run ons…perhaps the Lambie Pienaar half back combination might grow into something very special.

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