Kolisi: 'I don't know where we went wrong'

REACTION: Springbok captain Siya Kolisi struggled to come up with a reason for his team’s defeat to the All Blacks on Saturday.

Jordie Barrett’s 78th-minute penalty condemned the Springboks to a 19-17 (half-time 13-11) defeat in a nail-biting Rugby Championship match in Townsville, Australia – the 100th meeting between the teams.

It was mostly a scrappy and bruising affair with not much between the sides during the 80 minutes.

For Kolisi the defeat was a hard pill to swallow.

“I can’t fault my teammates and I can’t fault the coaches with the preparation,” Kolisi told reporters after the match.

“I can’t tell you where it went wrong in the game, but I felt our plan worked.

“They contested our mauls and I thought our scrums were really good today [Saturday].

“I don’t know where we went wrong, to be honest. We will have to look at the video.”

‘We just lacked the composure’

Meanwhile, Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber believes a lack of composure in the dying stages of the game could be the problem

“The closeness of the winning margin was expected,” said Nienaber.

“When the number one and number two teams in the world play each other, there is always going to be small margins and recent results since 2018 have shown that as well.

“I thought we did enough to win this from an effort perspective and the players were excellent tonight, but perhaps we just lacked the composure when it mattered in that last minute or two.”