VIDEO: Boks need solutions after 'chasing ghosts'
REACTION: Springbok prop Steven Kitshoff says his team will have to find ways to slow the All Blacks’ ball down before their next meeting at Twickenham in August before the World Cup.
The All Blacks ran the Boks ragged to go 17-0 in front in the opening 20 minutes of their Round Two Rugby Championship clash in Auckland on Saturday.
Ian Foster’s side eventually won the game 35-20, which allowed them to put one hand on the Rugby Championship trophy ahead of the final round of matches on July 29.
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“A lot of things stuck for them in that first 20 minutes,” said Kitshoff.
“It felt like we were chasing ghosts for 20 minutes.
“When the Springboks make a dominant tackle and actually get them on the ground, there is an opportunity for us to realign our defensive system and put line speed and tackle pressure back onto them.
“I just felt that with their offloads and the way they just moved the ball, everything stuck for them and they played an incredible opening passage of the game and they scored a couple of good tries from it.
“It is something we will have to look at. Building up to that Test at Twickenham we can find solutions and actually try and slow their ball down and make it a bit more difficult for them to play with that extremely high tempo.”
An area where the Boks struggled to dominate was the breakdowns and Kitshoff believes it became a free-for-all.
“It was a bit of a mess. We looked at it during our prep during the week and if you watched the All Blacks-Argentina game you could see there was a lot of pressure when it came to the breakdown.
“It is something we will definitely work on to create quicker and cleaner ball for our No.9s to attack from.
“It was a bit of a free-for-all and for us and it is just about controlling the controllables in those scenarios.”
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