All Blacks cash in as confused Boks roll the dice

To quote a mate, by the time we remembered to be Boks again, it was too late. I hope the lesson has been learned, writes Mark Keohane.

The mate is Stuart Kelly, a former rugby journalist at the Star and Cape Argus, who now resides in Bangkok.

His message is to the point: ‘Time to stop the Tony Ball worship everyone (except South Africans) love so much. It was better when the world disliked us and we won.’

Spot on.

Now the world loves us, embraces this belief we have to evolve our game to win another World Cup and finally breathes a sigh of relief that we leave the game’s strongest tighthead scrumming prop on the bench for 60 minutes, play so much rugby in the 30 between halfway and our own quarter, get bossed at the breakdown and give away half our line out jumpers to the philosophy that our big men will do wonders in the tramlines post winning the shortened line outs.

But to do so, the Boks first have to win the line out, which they seldom do these days in the big moments.

Eden Park had such expectation but the Boks did not deliver.

Next weekend they will be underdogs and they will thrive, but it does not take away the disappointment of Saturday’s result or the fact that, even as back to back World Cup champions, the coaches, and by extension the 23 picked to play, could revel in an expectation that they were good enough to win.

What seemed to matter more was that they lost playing the way the world wants the Boks to play because it is a guarantee that they have a good chance of beating the Boks.

When the Boks played a certain way to win the World Cup final in 2023 and the semi-final in 2019 and the third and final Test decider against the British & Irish Lions in 2021, they did it because of an inherent mongrel and simplicity that suited the needs for the occasion.

This simplicity was absent for most of the Test at Eden Park as the Boks played into the very appreciative hands of the hosts, who were 14 points up on 20 minutes thanks to a sloppy Boks backline attack and a defensive line out in which one-on-one tackles were slipped with the ease at which a good looker cruises past a bouncer at a night club door.

The All Blacks were disciplined, strong in defence and very good in understanding the need for kicking it into the heavens and only playing in certain areas.

The home team line out was always in control against a Bok defensive line out as limp as the famed rush defence.

Rassie rues ‘really bad’ 15 minutes

This was a Boks team in which attack is now the priority and it showed.

Bring back defence as the DNA of this team. It isn’t always pretty but it is potent.

The referee and match officials will cop a caning in South Africa, and for good reason, but this was not a Test lost because of the referee. The Boks lost it because of the match 23 selections, in who starts, who finishes and who was left out, but they lost it because on this biggest of days at Eden Park they moved away from works for them and allowed the All Blacks the comfort of dictating a match through what works for them.

Individually, there were plusses for the Boks, but collectively there was nothing to take from another defeat in New Zealand and another one at Eden Park, other than it was another defeat.

Rassie Erasmus, post the defeat, said the South African supporters would be ‘GATVOL’.

It is the one thing he called right this week.