Although the Springboks were not at their best in Saturday’s victory over Argentina in Buenos Aires, Nick Mallett highlighted two “positives” from the world champions’ play.
Rassie Erasmus’ troops were made to work very hard to clinch a 17-10 victory over Felipe Contepomi’s charges at Estadio José Amalfitani with a 62nd minute converted Cameron Hanekom try securing the win for the visitors after the sides were level at 10-10 at half-time.
Los Pumas had a chance to clinch a draw in the game’s closing stages but it wasn’t to be as Matías Moroni knocked on a pass from Lucio Cinti deep inside the Springboks’ 22.
The Boks had left several first-choice players, who were on duty during last month’s Nations Championship Tests against England, Scotland and Wales, behind in South Africa while some players were back in action against Argentina for the first time after lengthy injury lay-offs.
Mallett believes that contributed to the world champions not being at their best in the Buenos Aires clash, which is a warm-up match for their eagerly anticipated Greatest Rivalry Test series against their arch-rivals the All Blacks which gets underway in Johannesburg on August 22.
‘An understandably average performance’
“I thought it was an understandably average performance by the Boks, I think getting so many players coming back from injury, not having played for quite a while,” he told the Talking Boks podcast with Brenden Nel.
“Guys coming back from injury, I mean, (Eben) Etzebeth, Lood de Jager, Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu), there were numerous, Ethan Hooker, the team looked disconnected and inaccurate, and the areas of our game which were normally our real strong points, the kicking contestables, were very, very poor in this game.
“We either kicked it too long, which gave them very easy marks or an ability to counter-attack, or else we kicked it just straight up in the air and it came down on our own heads, so we didn’t get any forward momentum to get behind their pack.
“So I thought the kicking from both, from the half-backs, from (Aphelele) Fassie, from Sacha, and from (Cobus) Reinach was very poor in this game, and normally the contestables is the area of the game that’s almost like a set-piece for us.
“We’re very good at it.”
Mallett had special praise for South Africa’s scrummaging efforts throughout the match and also hailed Argentina for being competitive until the end.
“Thankfully, our scrum, with both front-rows that came on, our scrum was excellent, except for the first scrum of the game when Thomas du Toit was penalised, but apart from that, we really got a lot of dominance in the scrum, which saved us, because our attack was blunt, we didn’t have any offloads, we never got momentum through the middle.
“When we did have many consecutive drives, as we did when Siya Kolisi had three or four good carries, three carries, I think, up the left-hand side, and we got to within close to their line, Etzebeth had the ball knocked out of his hand by a no-arms tackle, and that was where we looked like we were getting the momentum.
“And then in the second half as well, when the Bomb Squad came on, there was a lot more energy there. But congratulations to Argentina, they played with their heart on their sleeves. Every single one of their players tackled for his life, and they just made it very, very difficult for us.
“They really did. And in the end of the game, who knows, if that guy caught the pass, whether he would have scored or not is debatable, because there was Sacha Mngomezulu and another player on cover, but had he scored there, one couldn’t have argued with a draw.
“I think they really were in this game and made us work very, very hard for the win.”
Boks’ defensive efforts also praised
Apart from world champions’ superb efforts in the scrums, the former Springboks head coach also singled out their excellent defensive work for special praise.
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“If we just look at the positives out of the game, I think continuing our scrum dominance against everyone, that was really, really good to see,” he said.
“Although there weren’t many scrums in the game, I think we had seven on our ball. And the second thing was the defence. So we do talk, we were a little bit, I was a bit critical and I have been critical about the fluidity of the attack and the inability to offload and accepting that the try in the 39th minute where I thought both Esterhuizen and Canan Moodie did wonderfully well.
“That was a beautiful bit of sleight of hand. We were very blunt, very direct and we often got double hits and double tackles just because we were one off runners. But when they had the ball and they did move it around nicely, our defence was well set all the time.
“We really were well organised and our scramble defence, we pressed hard, but if they did play deeper and get it out wide, we had enough players from inside to press and shift late.
“And I was really impressed. That last, where they had 16, 17 phases in our 22, not to give a penalty, another penalty away there and to make some very good hits to actually knock them back away from our try-line was a positive.
“And so two things, defence and scrum, I think we can get better in our lineouts. I think we can definitely get better with our attack and we, and we need to improve our contestables because playing the All Blacks, the areas of the game that were, their areas of the game that were weak against the Stormers were scrums, more defence and contestables in particular.
“You know, the Stormers, when they managed to get from set-piece to set-piece, the All Blacks didn’t look as though they enjoyed that at all.
“They wanted a quick, fast flowing game. And so we need to get our contestable kicking back on point. That is a very strong area of our game that was way off this last weekend.”
READ MORE: Comment: All Blacks need not ‘worry’ after Springboks ‘escaped to victory’ against Argentina