All Blacks legend Sir John Kirwan has praised the Springboks’ innovation in the victory over Italy, but believes it was one of the worst performances Rassie Erasmus’ men have produced in some time.
South Africa scored seven tries en route to their 45-0 thrashing of the Azzurri, the team Kirwan previously coached, with two of the scores engineered from their new open play lineout tactic.
The Boks clinched the comprehensive victory despite a red card to Jasper Wiese in the 20th minute of the match and even went down to 13 men at one stage when Wilco Louw was yellow carded.
Worst and most frustrating Springboks performance
Still, that was not enough to impress Kirwan, though. However, the former winger did enjoy the innovation, particularly the first ploy of the game to manufacture a scrum as Manie Libbok chipped the kick-off short to Andre Esterhuizen.
“I had a laugh at that because when I was coaching Italy, we did that kick-off against Ireland in about 2003 because we felt that we had a better scrum,” Kirwan remarked on The Rivals podcast with Springboks great Victor Matfield.
“And we got penalised straight away like South Africa.
“But I love the innovation, but we need to understand when we are flaunting with the laws rather than being innovative.
“I love Rassie’s innovation, I do think they are great… but we’ve spoken about the physical player changing and if we introduce some of these things, is it going to fundamentally change what we all stand for in the game?”
Zoning in on the performance of the Boks, Kirwan feels that there will be a lot that the likes of France and the All Blacks could take away, stating that it’s the worst he has seen the Springboks play in some time.
“I thought it was the worst and most frustrating performance I’ve seen from South Africa in a long time,” he stated.
“When you play Italy, sometimes they can be incredibly frustrating. I know they scored six or seven tries, I just didn’t feel that they got into the real rhythm of their game.
“South Africa and France are the two teams that I feel have real big depth but a few of the guys on the weekend, I don’t feel they were up to the level of the older guys.
“So it was a really revealing [performance], if you are an All Black or a Frenchman and you are looking at the current world champion Springboks, you are always looking for a fault or a way to beat them. So, I don’t feel it was a great performance from South Africa as a whole.
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Matfield hits back
His comments seemed to have baffled Matfield, who pressed Kirwan to pinpoint the players he felt did not ‘stand up’ against the Azzurri.
“The whole front-five,” the New Zealander replied.
“I don’t know if that was a tactical change early on with your prop [Thomas du Toit], who was struggling with the Italians.
“I just felt your leadership, too, you got frustrated, which didn’t help with the red card. But it didn’t seem like you stuck to the plan of breaking down Italy, then running them off their feet and letting them explode.
“I feel they left them on the side a little bit.
“I didn’t think that the front five were dominant, and they just wanted to bully the opposition rather than outplay them.”
Matfield disagreed as he felt that it was a vast improvement from the Springboks compared to the clash in Pretoria.
South Africa were 42-24 victors at Loftus but were outplayed in the second half with the Italians running in three tries.
The former Bok lock felt that, considering the sending off to Wiese, Erasmus’ men still put in a tidy performance.
“I felt it was a much better performance than last week, going up playing good rugby and then getting a red card, then going to 13 men but still nilling them, and scoring 45 points,” he said.
“It’s always difficult being one man down because you could lose a centre who has to go into the forwards, then back in the backline. They did what they needed to do, the physicality was there, and the intent was much better than last week.
“I don’t think it was that bad of a performance considering they had 14 men for 60 minutes.”
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