Relief for battling Springboks in Cape Town

The Springboks won by eight points, but they could easily have lost by eight points. Relief is the emotion of the Springboks in Cape Town, having scored 30 points and conceded 22, writes Mark Keohane.

The Boks played like an invitational team and a match 23 that this season has not had two successive outings.

They were inaccurate, although they were more balanced in the approach from the debacle of Johannesburg a week ago.

Handre Pollard provided the control at flyhalf and was perfect off the kicking tee and the presence of World Cup winners Cheslin Kolbe and Damian de Allende were positives in a win that on another night could have read more uncomfortably.

Wilco Louw was huge in the final 20 minutes. The moment the big tighthead anchored the Boks scrum, there was penalty reward at the scrum engage.

But the entire complexion of the match turned on James O’Connor’s missed conversion that would have given the Wallabies a 24-23 lead with less than a quarter to play.

The Wallabies, as they did in Johannesburg hung in there and refused to take a step back. They matched the Boks physically in the collisions, exposed the Boks’ slow reaction time on several occasions and were a missed conversion and two missed penalty kicks (in the final five minutes) away from going back-to-back in South Africa for the first time ever.

The Boks, 20-7 up on 38 minutes, led 20-10 at a halftime, but within five minutes of the restart the difference was just three points, courtesy of a Wallabies seven pointer.

From there on in it was a grind and Australia in the third quarter looked the stronger, as they did in Johannesburg.

The Wallabies, stunning 38-22 winners in Johannesburg after trailing 22-0, are an improved squad from 2024 when the Boks rolled them twice in succession in Australia.

The Boks look a worse combination than the squad who won five of six Rugby Championship titles en-route to the Rugby Championship, and this could be because of the continued squad rotation.

The Boks were inconsistent and inaccurate and the sense is one of players desperate to get game time on successive weekends.

The All Blacks, in New Zealand, got a lot tougher after these past two Tests against Australia.

The optimism of going to New Zealand after last season’s Rugby Championship home double against the All Blacks, will have dipped with a dose of reality that the Boks in 2025 have battled to match the heights of 2024.

The Rugby Championship defence is alive, courtesy of the win, but it has been more a case of heavy breathing than a purring.

Photo by Grant Pitcher/Gallo Images