In today’s historic first Bok test at Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit, the mighty Springboks take on Scotland.
Kick-off is at 17h15.
Springboks:15 Willie le Roux, 14 Bryan Habana, 13 JJ Engelbrecht, 12 Jean de Villiers (c), 11 Bjorn Basson, 10 Morné Steyn, 9 Ruan Pienaar, 8 Pierre Spies, 7 Arno Botha, 6 Marcell Coetzee, 5 Juandré Kruger, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Jannie du Plessis, 2 Adriaan Strauss, 1 Tendai Mtawarira.
Substitutes: 16 Bismarck du Plessis, 17 Trevor Nyakane, 18 Coenie Oosthuizen, 19 Flip van der Merwe, 20 Siya Kolisi, 21 Piet van Zyl, 22 Pat Lambie, 23 Jan Serfontein.
Scotland: 15 Peter Murchie, 14 Tommy Seymour, 13 Alex Dunbar, 12 Matt Scott, 11 Sean Lamont, 10 Ruaridh Jackson, 9 Greig Laidlaw, 8 Johnnie Beattie, 7 Ryan Wilson, 6 Alasdair Strokosch, 5 Jim Hamilton, 4 Tim Swinson, 3 Euan Murray, 2 Scott Lawson, 1 Alasdair Dickinson.
Substitutes: 16 Stevie Lawrie, 17 Jon Welsh, 18 Moray Low, 19 Alastair Kellock, 20 David Denton, 21 Henry Pyrgos, 22 Peter Horne, 23 Duncan Taylor.
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Go Samoa! Shut the Mullet up.
I would love to see a Boks vs Samoa game
Italy and Scots can not give us the practise we require for 4 nations. Samoa game should bring it! Scots to lose by 40
Samoa 39 – 10 Italy. Puts our win into perspective.
welcome to Mbombela… let’s kill something 🙂
Arno Botha off – knee
SA 0 -3 Scotland after 7 min
@robdylan (Comment 5) :
Kolisi on…less power and pace in Kolisi…
Not the best loose trio for test level…
Marcel not been up to scratch, Spies just there…Kolisi won’t make test side for most tier 1 countries…
Let’s hope our pacey backs pull us through…
Boks 3 – 3 Scotland after 13 min.
Penalty Steyn
Pienaar slower than Vermaak…not good for the backline play we wanna see…
@Hmmm (Comment 7) : is there any end to the kak you speak?
This ref is blind or scottish :p
Boks 6 – 3 Scotland after 18 min
Lots of early niggle … Off thje ball
try Scotland
Geez – bad defence bokke
SA 6 – 10 Scotland
JJ a great player…pace/strong/great step…the best 13 in SA by a long shot…but he needs to work those mistakes out his game…not gonna be tolerated at this level…dumb move to try a full stretch intercept 5 meters from your own tryline!!!
Scots looing the better side…beating us at scrum…lineout more steady than ours…their loosies more effective at the ruck…disrupting us when we have ball in hand…not looking good for Bokke…
The ref needs to start reffing these rucks a bit better
There is so much off the ball interference and niggle
Ruan running back before he does anything?!!? His nullifying the pace of anyone that receives the ball from him…
AB’s must be nursing a semi watching this in anticipation of a grand rogering in the RC.
We need to replace the whole front row (first time ever Strauss not having a good game) and No9…unfortunately we cannot do anything about the loose trio…but Coenie covers a bit there…
We will be better then…
I’m gona say it. WTF Boks??????????????
that’s the half-time score. Ugh.
We trail a weakend Scottish team in SA at half time? What the hell is going on?
@robdylan (Comment 24) :
Not looking good nor looking promising…
Extremely poor loose trio this game…front row off par…Ruan very slow and inaccurate…
scots showing some passion good on them! lets hope the boks catch on
Credit to the Scots. Man for man more heart in this than the Boks and not carrying passengers like we do in the form of du Plessis, Marais, Coetzee, Spies, Pienaar and Engelbrecht.
The noise was causing problems in the lineouts? Seriously?? 🙄
@rhineshark (Comment 28) : who is Marais?
@robdylan (Comment 30) : Sorry Kruger. 😳
Oh boy…. 😆
Holy crap our forwards are nowhere. Rucks are a joke.
well this just got real very fast 😯
The Scots loose trio making Bokke Loose trio look 3rd grade…
We need to make the changes quick..
Whole front row…and Van Zyl for Pienaar…
Such a pity that PSdT got injured. 😥
SA 6 – 15 Scotland after 44 min
Would actually be a little disappointing if the Scots lost it from here.
Sa 6 – 17 Scotland
Boks 13 – 17 Scotland after 50 min. Penalty try Boks
Time for wholesale changes.
Ruan the worst player on the park…
Then our entire loose bad and under par…
Strauss much better 2nd half…but we can do with a change of props…
This ref doesn’t know what in from the side means
Boks lead 20-17. Try JJ
The Bizzzzneess is back!
Good changes made…not just Ruan to be taken off…
Really fail to see what jandre Kruger adds to the team
How does this competition work? Everyone plays everyone else once and the team with most points wins the comp? Studio guys seemed to imply that there was a competition between the other three teams to earn the right to play us in a “final”.
Sa lead 23-17. Penalty Lambie
Boks win 30-17. Last try scored by Serfontein
@Hmmm (Comment 46) :
Kolisi made you swallow your words and van Zyl was horrible.
Don’t you ever get tired of looking silly?
The worst I’ve seen a Springbok side play since 2006.
@Blue Centurion (Comment 52) : Oh please. Where were you during Div’s tenure?
@Big Fish (Comment 51) : i was just about to say exactly the same thing… Jeez what a tonsil! so good to see Bissie back on the park. In the 15 min he was on he did more than Strauss…
@Big Fish (Comment 51) :
Kolisi did not make me swallow my words…
The 2 best loosies on the field was Bismark and Coenie…
But van Zyl was horrible…
@klempie (Comment 53) : We beat everything in sight in 2009 and we never had record scores against us under Div.
Strockosh was a viking. An annoying, thuggish viking – but good at what he did. But he was out berserkered by Bismarck.
Bismarck Bismarck Bismarck Bismarck #Bismarck
It seems that, the more time the Springboks spend together with HM, the worse they become.
Last year was the same, started off reasonably well against England and it deteriorated from there.
Anyways, bring on the Sharks boardroom politics, much more excitement happening there.
@MerckZ (Comment 57) : Haha yeah, I felt he had earned a yellow after all those repeated infringements!
Dreading the RC big time. The BIL’s that smashed the Waratahs this morning would have done the same to us today.
@FireTheLooser (Comment 59) : i’m going to have to agree with you the board room politics a hell of alot better than this shoking springbok side beside play this team against samoa and lets hope morne spies raun and the other idiots in the team gets injured maybe then the right team will be pick
@MerckZ (Comment 57) : @SeanyJMc (Comment 60) : @sharks4eve2013 (Comment 62) : sorry to say but the Scots palyed negative rugby! they go away with murder at the breakdowns, they were lying all over the place and were offside the rest of the time. If it was a Sanzar ref they would have received lots of yellow cards and the viking would have been the first to go. The game chanced after the yellow card as they were afraid of getting another yellow for all the breakdown penalties.
@Hmmm (Comment 55) : come now, give credit, Siyamthanda Kolisi did bloody well today and he thoroughly deserved Man of the Match
I eat humble pie. Scots gave us a run for our money again, playing on the edge of the rules and a lot of negative play.
The real test shall be against Samoa. Our back line skills sucked as well as our support play!
Give this Bok team a chance. I think there’s a lot of good things done by this team, Bokke going to win RC with this team.
@JD (Comment 63) : You know who else plays exactly the same? The kiwis, that’s their whole game plan, tons of off the ball pulling and holding back, taking defenders out at the ruck, running blocking lines.
They’re just much better at getting away with it. The Springboks will have to learn to deal with it, it is obvious that certain refs are unable to identify it on the field and we can’t always be the team blaming the ref when a team’s negative tactics puts us on the back foot.
@JD (Comment 63) : looked they might have played negative ragga but they got away with it with that said so what did you think of your defense cause the ref had nothing to do with that they ran at our 9 and 10 channel and went over the advantage line time and again we can be glad some of there passes was shocking if we play like this against the AB’S and aussies well i’l leave that thought with you
You can see that even the Scots have some real back line coaching (and not some nepotist attack coach plus a Vodacom cup level back line coach) – as their outside backs looked a lot better than ours. Then again our defense alignment was atrocious plus our forwards got completely out-muscled at the breakdown. The Scots lived on the edge at the rucks, and the ref allowed them to get away with it.
I am afraid Marcel is not offering much this year – Kolisi played a lot more intelligently in his debut.
The only shining light for me was seeing Bismarck bullying the Scots (ripping balls away at will) and having a decent performance at line out time.
JDV offers just one trick at 12 – bash it up and go to ground. There is no inventiveness in this back line – only Le Roux trying some fairly dangerous stuff to open up spaces. That long pass to Basson just begged to be intercepted.
@Ludz (Comment 64) :
Don’t get me wrong…was not bad mouthing Kolisi…I was referring to our loose trio as a whole…they ALL were poor at the ruck…even Kolisi had a open ball and could only win a scrum…a loose trio winning m-o-m just shows how crap we were…even their defensive positioning was poor…all made the tackles when in front of them…but Scots broke the line a lot and only tackled behind advantage line…
The Scots loose trio works us over at the ruck…and we can cry negative rugby…but that is exactly what we been expecting from Brussow and Burger all these years and loved them for getting it right so many times…
We were sooooo much better when Bizzy and Coenie came on…
And I am sorry…we cannot start with Jannie and Beast…we need to start with Trevor and Coenie…much better…and Beast can come on as impact player…
Even Strauss was off…was much better 2nd half…and had a good few runs…
@Ludz (Comment 64) : myeke Ludz, besima ngenyawo thina uSiya xa ephethe ibhola esenza into zamehlo!
@FireTheLooser (Comment 67) :
The nature of rugby rules not being black on white means that the team that [lays the reff the best should win ..
@Hmmm (Comment 35) : If you cant see the value Jannie adds then you probably played wing or spectator whenever you played rugby 😆 . He is our best tight head and may even be the best tight head in world rugby. Yesterday he was one of the better forwards ,his work rate was high.
It concerns me that Meyer highlighted the breakdowns as an area he had focused on in preseason and so far it has been poor. The defensive structures are a joke ;shameful that a group of our supposed finest players don’t have an inkling on how to make good gut calls on defense.
One or two things are obvious to me :1.We have a few passengers in the side ,no need for me to point them out again. 2.Some players look as if they don’t understand their roles or they just arent doing their duties ;Etzebeth was poor yesterday-his body position in mauls and rucks was useless and he doesn’t clean enough or well enough and Coetzee looks caught between being a carrier and fetch he doesn’t do either well enough. 3.We look poorly drilled 4.Our game plan is archaic and not fit for the test arena.
@Talent (Comment 74) :
I agree with everything you say…except for the Jannie comment…
He is not good in the scrum…poor at ruck and misses tackles…not even a good carrier of the ball…
However…I am listening…please enlighten me on what value he ads…and to help me relate…be kind and refference to games…
@Megatron (Comment 72) : uwagqibile buth’ omkhulu. Ibiyimincili yodwa kumzi ontsundu izolo, very special moment. Apologies for those who don’t understand, just no better way to express other than the home language
@Hmmm (Comment 75) : There is a huge difference when he is not at tight head, he anchors the scrums. I agree his ball carrying is not good enough but he does ruck well .He was involved often last night at the breakdown.
@Talent (Comment 77) :
I donno hey…and yesterday he missed tackles again and I remember twice where he joined the ruck and failed to do anything…he just fell off…
@FireTheLooser (Comment 59) : agree fully
ruan and spies were not on par at all
@Ludz (Comment 76) : Can we just talk Afrikaans hear hey?
@rhineshark (Comment 81) : 😆 my afrikaans is a bit rusty, maar ja,ons kan n bietjie praat. Ek kan nie belowe ek sal alles verstaan nie. Ek sal probeer.