Hits and Misses: Boks and All Blacks flex as Wallabies flop

OPINION: The word “stunning” had both positive and negative connotations in the opening weekend of the Northern Hemisphere leg of the Nations Championship.

While Ireland smashed Argentina 42-12 at the Aviva Stadium in the opening match on Friday night, South Africa taught Italy a rugby lesson with a 66-7 drubbing at Estadio Camilo Cano in the first Test on Saturday.

New Zealand extended their one hundred and twenty-one year unbeaten streak against Scotland by defeating them 43-21 at Murrayfield, while Wales had to work hard to overcome Japan 28-21 in an entertaining fixture at the Pricipality Stadium.

France retained their position at the top of the Northern Conference with a dominant display against Fiji at OL Stadium to claim a 54-17 win, while England downed Australia 45-22 in the weekend’s headline Test at Allianz Stadium.

We look at some of the highs and lows from Round Four of the Nations Championship.

Hits:

The Room for Improvement in Boks’ Shining Performance

What makes the Springboks’ demolition of Italy even more impressive is the fact that they weren’t even at their best for the full 80.

Rassie Erasmus’s crew put the game to bed by the 25th minute and went into the break with an out-of-reach 45-0 lead.

The defeated expressions of many of the Italian players and coaching staff told a story of the humiliation they were subjected to in that first half.

The world champions made it look like no more than an opposed training session, and ironically, the scrum was probably the South Africans’ least lethal area, with Italy’s pack holding on for the most part and even driving the Boks back into their 22 and winning a penalty early in the second half. It wasn’t the utter obliteration we’ve come to expect from the scrum masters, but outside of that area, it was pure carnage.

There were certainly levels to the visitors’ brilliance, but not one player had a bad game.

The Springboks had everything in that first half, from faultless decision-making, defence, and physicality, to perfectly precise execution, generously sprinkled with breathtaking individual touches, like Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s outrageous 50:22 and Jasper Wiese’s dummy and centre-esque break to set up Damian Willemse’s try.

The mass arrival of their bench reinforcements brought a bit of disruption, while the Boks, collectively, made a number of errors in the second 40, especially directly after the break, after a near-flawless first half. It’s not that the bench didn’t add quality, but nothing was going to top the flow the starters enjoyed in those first 40 minutes. Italy’s bench, on the other hand, massively improved things for the hosts and outshined the men they replaced.

The Boks were a rugby template in the first two quarters, and their only flaw was not maintaining their clinical edge for the full match.

France’s Fantastic Halfback Stop-Gap

It was a disastrous situation when Romain Ntamack left the field injured considering that Matthieu Jalibert, Thomas Ramos, and Antoine Hastoy are already sidelined, leaving them without a specialist flyhalf, but Antoine Dupont and Maxime Lucu showed that there might not be any reason to panic.

While losing Ntamack one week out from their biggest game is certainly disruptive, Dupont produced a superb effort as he ran the show and had a hand in absolutely every attacking reward France got while Lucu – a specialist 9 – moved to 10.

He made a match-high 19 carries and three linebreaks, won a turnover, and scored a try of his own after playing a leading role in the creation of several.

It was a successful dual game-managing role alongside Lucu, and Dupont’s performance especially may be the answer to France’s flyhalf situation.

But Les Bleus may not want to risk losing his lightning-quick reaction and running threat around the base of the ruck, which probably makes Lucu, who has covered 10 for Bordeaux Begles before and sometimes carries the goal-kicking duties for his club anyway, a safer bet at 10.

Other than bringing in an inexperienced 10 and setting him for a baptism of fire against the Boks, those are likely the options Fabien Galthié will have to weigh.

All Black Scrum Going From Flaw to Flex

The Kiwis were schooled at the set-piece during the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series against the Springboks, and while their scrum went better in the Bledisloe Cup Tests against Australia, those matches were never really going to be a true measure of their scrum growth; the Wallabies just don’t present the same kind of challenge as the Boks in that area.

Scotland’s scrummaging unit under Pieter de Villiers was a much sterner test, and one the All Blacks passed with flying colours as they consistently put the Scottish props under pressure and laid the platform for their attack.

Ethan de Groot and Fletcher Newell had the upper hand over their front-row opposition and their replacements picked up where they left off when they came on in the second half.

After going into halftime with a slim 24-21 lead, the increasing influence of their scrum saw New Zealand win several penalties that contributed to their 19-0 second-half scoreline.

Misses:

Azzurri’s First Half

It doesn’t matter if you’re missing one, five, or 16 key players, producing a performance like that against the best team in the world will see you punished every single time.

At times it looked more like a matter of the Springboks just being too good rather than Italy being poor, but when they did have the ball, they looked like they had no direction in attack and their errors and poor exits didn’t help, either.

For a team that lacked possession so severely, it was baffling how much they kicked the ball away.

While they looked better in the second half, they dug themselves into too deep a hole before the break.

Their whole first half – or at least the majority of it – was a total miss.

Argentina’s Abysmal Lineout and Self-Destruction

Los Pumas stayed true to character at the Aviva Stadium as they were their ill-disciplined selves, and their malfunctioning lineout just compounded their problems.

It was a promising start by the visitors, and their fans perhaps had just enough reason to be cautiously optimistic and entertain the prospect of a historic win in Dublin.

But what a turn things took.

While Argentina won two more turnovers than Ireland, they conceded 14 penalties to six and had two players sin-binned. Those numerical disadvantages proved costly.

They conceded two converted tries while Justo Piccardo and Efrain Elias were in the bin, while their lineout was also a disaster.

They won just 58 percent of their lineouts – a numerical representation of their failure to defend their own throws – while starting hooker Julian Montoya was way off form at the set-piece before leaving to undergo an HIA and did not return. Leonel Oviedo, who took over from Montoya, also left for an HIA.

The fact that the lineout wasn’t much worse off without a specialist hooker should capture just how poor the throwers were in that area, although the second-row shouldn’t be excused, and while Oviedo returned to the field and looked more stable at the set-piece later on, the damage had been done.

Wallabies’ Disjointed Display

Saying the score flattered Australia isn’t an inflated statement.

Had it not been for a solo intercept try by Max Jorgensen, the Wallabies wouldn’t have had even a try to show for their frustrating efforts in the first half.

While they managed to string more than four phases together after trailing 10-19 at the break, the mediocrity that plagued their first half put too much distance between them and the hosts.

They were a disjointed sight and struggled to put together anything noteworthy in attack up until the last quarter, their defence was insipid and their presence in the collisions non-existant.

England were fully in control and even when they weren’t Australia were only let in by the hosts’ mistakes as England produced their most convincing performance this year, especially in terms of their attacking shape, to achieve their biggest-ever win over Australia.

It took Les Kiss’s men 61 minutes to actually create something, with Filipo Daugunu finishing off with a try in the corner.

Not much separated the two teams in terms of possession; England had 53 percent possession compared to Australia’s 47, but the numbers reflect how they made better use of their ball.

They made 126 carries to the Wallabies’ 117, 15 linebreaks to their nine, conceded seven penalties to Australia’s 11, and lost 15 turnovers to their 19.

After a promising start to Kiss’ reign, the Wallabies have now suffered three big defeats and find themselves in a less-than-ideal position yet again one year from hosting the world cup.