Bafana laments lost opportunites as 'hurting" Junior Boks play for pride

REACTION: It’s all or nothing for ‘hurting’ Junior Boks after losing to Argentina as they look to bouce back in the seventh place Final on Friday.

The Junior Springboks went down by 24-34 to Los Pumitas in Cape Town on Sunday afternoon after trailing 10-24 at half-time – giving a much better account of their previous performance in their performance against Argentina 10 days ago.

There were some great attacking displays from the home team much due to the drier conditions opposed to their previous encounter, helping their cause but was dominated in the lineout which proved to be the difference maker in the contest.

Much like their previous clash – Argentina started stronger of the two sides – taking a 14-point lead into the break.
The Junior Boks had an improved second half – with centre Jurenzo Julius having a strong performance, dotting down twice in the process.

Junior Boks head coach Bafana Nhleko lamented his side’s trait of dropping the intensity at important moments of the match that spoiled several good opportunities.

“There were lots of pressure release today,” said Nhleko.

“We would play in moments and get good momentum, then we release the pressure with an error or poor decision making and then we would find ourselves on the backfoot again.

“We started well in the lineouts, and when they started to get tired, we fell off with our detail to keep the pressure on them.

“Those are the opportunities that we lost, and those moments really hurt us. Today, the most disappointing thing was around the defence, which is usually our strong point.”

Nhleko’s had a blunt assessment on the mood in the camp:

“Obviously we’re down in terms of how we feel because the result wasn’t what we had hoped for. The reality is that we must get up and go again because we have a game again on Friday.”

Bafana shared his thoughts on finishing the tournament, be it against Wales or Australia:

“We know people are hurting, and the team hurt as much. The performance was good in parts but not good enough for the full 80 minutes, but we have one more to go, and we must bounce back and hopefully finish on a better note. Now we must play for some pride.”