The three boxes ticked by Boks at Durban Slaughterhouse
OPINION: The Springboks concluded their Southern Hemisphere leg of the Nations Championship with a 43-0 dismantling of Wales at Kings Park at the weekend.
While they weren’t a polished product in the seven-try display, it marked their third win in a row, putting 40-plus points on northern opposition after dealing with England (45-21) and Scotland (42-28) in the first two rounds.
We look at three boxes the South Africans ticked in their second consecutive blanking of Wales.
Sharpened Cornerstones
The Springboks’ defence was mediocre against England at Ellis Park as they missed numerous tackles and lacked overall cohesion.
This weekend, the Boks made 100 tackles and missed just seven for a tackle completion rate of 93 percent, while their scrum and line-out were also a much more threatening operation.
They put in a few dominant displays at scrum time, the highlight being the one that obliterated Wales and had them backpedalling over their own tryline before Cobus Reinach’s try. That was the third dominant scrum from the hosts early on, having bagged a scrum penalty before that one and having Wales’ pack back wheeling in another shortly before the scrumhalf’s try. Their line-out was just as lethal as they secured all 20 of their feeds.
Heading into the game, Wales said they wanted to match the world champions’ set-piece and physicality or at least test themselves against them.
Well, they got their results.
Deepened Depth
The Boks unleashed four debutants against Wales, building on their squad experiments as they have now fielded three vastly different teams in as many matches with three different halfback combinations.
Jaco Williams, Vusi Moyo, Carlu Sadie, and Ruben van Heerden all made their international bows, and all of them produced pleasing performances in the Boks’ third Test of the season.
Rassie Erasmus has utilised more than 40 players up to this point, showing that the objective of building depth was anything but all talk as they keep one eye firmly on the 2027 World Cup.
Building that kind of depth is an impressive feat all by itself, and while they might have lacked in certain aspects, not once did they look like a makeshift team or resemble anything completely disjointed.
Just imagine the havoc a settled, world cup-ready unit can wreak.
Getting the W
Experimenting with combinations or giving a handful of newbies a go is usually a goal on its own. When doing so, teams sometimes accept that they won’t get the desired results as they work towards the main goal, but not the Springboks.
South Africa were completely dominant against the Welsh, and scarier still was the tally of points they left out there and how far they were from their best.
They were poor by their standards, messy even.
Seven line breaks in the first half alone that weren’t capitalised on, 20 turnovers lost, 16 handling errors…despite all that, the Boks won.
In between those errors, there were also responses followed by exclamation marks.
Paul de Villiers properly introduced himself as an out-and-out Bok fetcher in his third outing. The youngsters handled the pressure for the most part despite some nervy moments; the experienced players like Pieter-Steph du Toit, Malcolm Marx, the Wiese brothers, and Cobus Reinach came through. The bench reinforcements couldn’t be faulted.
Getting the result with yet another experimental side is a big win on its own.
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