The big one at Ellis Park today.
Kick-off is at 5pm.
South Africa: 15 Willie le Roux, 14 Cornal Hendricks, 13 Jan Serfontein, 12 Jean de Villiers (captain), 11 Bryan Habana, 10 Handré Pollard, 9 Francois Hougaard, 8 Duane Vermeulen/Schalk Burger, 7 Teboho Mohoje, 6 Marcell Coetzee, 5 Victor Matfield, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Jannie du Plessis, 2 Bismarck du Plessis, 1 Tendai Mtawarira.
Replacements: 16 Adriaan Strauss, 17 Trevor Nyakane, 18 Marcel van der Merwe, 19 Bakkies Botha, 20 Schalk Burger/Warren Whiteley, 21 Cobus Reinach, 22 Pat Lambie, 23 JP Pietersen.
New Zealand: 15 Israel Dagg, 14 Ben Smith, 13 Conrad Smith, 12 Malakai Fekitoa, 11 Julian Savea, 10 Beauden Barrett, 9 Aaron Smith, 8 Kieran Read, 7 Richie McCaw (captain), 6 Jerome Kaino, 5 Sam Whitelock, 4 Jeremy Thrush, 3 Owen Franks, 2 Keven Mealamu, 1 Joe Moody.
Replacements: 16 Dane Coles, 17 Ben Franks, 18 Charlie Faumuina, 19 Steven Luatua, 20 Liam Messam, 21 Tawera Kerr-Barlow, 22 Colin Slade, 23 Ryan Crotty.
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Stating the obvious here but the Bokke really need to win this one.
Pollard!!!
Incredible game so far
21 Boks NZ 13
Really good first half by the Boks. Pollard has had a blinder so far! Now if Wayne Barnes will just stop the All Blacks from constantly slowing down our ball illegally…
24 13. Boks holding on with immense defence
Lambie and Bakkies on
All Blacks getting away with murder at the breakdown
All Blacks camped in Bok half
Eventually dam wall breaks
24 20
25 20 NZ leads
25 24 with kick to follow
All Blacks have poached couple of lineoits from Matfield and Strauss now
JP charges down Kerr Barlows kick and KB hurts his leg. AB without 9 now
Strauss has lost every lineout his thrown in…. Our lineout has been useless since Bissie and Mahoje went off.
Lambie misses a drop attempt
Lambie nails an incredible 55 m penalty
Fucken dramatic match. We won!!!!!!
27 25
If the bench won the us the game last week, they nearly lost it this week!
Hope we will see the back of Morne now. Between Pollard and Lambie we are well covered at 10
Nice to finally win one against the All Blacks. Heyneke looked ecstatic.
Great also to only see about 3 box kicks from the Boks all game (and not a single one in the first half!!). Seeing the Bok backs run at full tilt with the ball for a change was a joy to behold.
The All Blacks finished the much stronger team though – so much for the talk mid week about our better conditioning…
Big credit to Lambie for that last kick.
The rugby we played in the first half was the best I have seen from the Boks in years.
Well done Bokke!
What a performance! What a match! How good is Vermeulen? Pollard impressing and proving why him and Lambie are the best flyhalves in SA by a long shot. The stand out this year is the way we are dealing with the breakdowns.
I hope this is the end of the kick and chase as only tactic as this team has shown now they have the ability to win big games.
Bokke u Beauties!
Some really slick handling from the backs today.
Jaaaaaaaaa!! Laaaaaaaambie you beautyyyyy!!!
That was another epic test match!!
I will go as far as saying the better team won on the day.
Between Lambie and Pollard flyhalf is covered
@JarsonX (Comment 33) : Absolutely!
Well played to all. Beating the All Blacks is so special!
Where’s the King of the Tjieta now,this game proved why AS is not a patch on Bismark especialy against a proper team and in broken play,Bismark was handling those Cheats like a master and AS nowhere
This was the best live game i have ever watched…Boks dominated first half and if we were fitter we would have seriously put away the All Blacks in the 2nd half. Richie McCaw is unbelievable- his workrate cannot be matched…although Marcel Coetzee and Duan Vermuelen come close. And lastly the Ellis park fans were incredible…maybe the kings park faithful need to worry less about whether the wife and kids have candy floss and worry more about the team they supporting. Just my 3 cents
@Feather (Comment 23) : @SheldonK (Comment 37) : I don’t think the 2nd half was a fitness issue, they just wanted to consolidate the lead and not open up the game as they were already up. The Boks were dominant in the last eight minutes. CR has improved his game and that bodes well for our future.
@Chippa (Comment 38) : No trust me being there u could see the Boks were buggered and the All Blacks were fitter. We were lucky to hold on and our strong bench helped in that regard. But if the game was 10min we were stuffed.
@SheldonK (Comment 37) : Ellis Park has an amazing atmosphere, even when the place is close to empty. Great stadium.
@Chippa (Comment 38) : You could see the guys were out on their feet. I think Brendan Venter mentioned in one of his columns that you need to be even fitter to play an attacking game vs. a defensive one.
@Bokhoring (Comment 41) : Yup, BV wrote that article. Never realised that to be the case but his reasoning made sense.
@Bokhoring (Comment 41) : @vanmartin (Comment 42) : I was chatting to my mate at the game and we reckon that the Boks expansive game just needs to be reigned in between the 60-70min as thats when we start to tire and concede easy points. if we just kept it close and tight then, then I think we will win a lot more games easier than we have been
@SheldonK (Comment 43) : Not a bad idea seeing as replacements also usually come on during that time. Keeping it tight would allow them some time to settle the nerves.
@SheldonK (Comment 39) : I’ll take it from you mate, I think HM has to tell JDV and BH to stick to our defensive structures a bit more and not go for intercepts all the time. The All Blacks always had an overlap on that side and was also the cause of both MF&BS tries.
@vanmartin (Comment 44) : If we just get it tight with our forwards for that 10min patch i reckon we could have won by 15-20 points. Boks blew them away in the first half and they only stayed on touching distance cos our kickoff receiving was bad
@Chippa (Comment 45) : Yeh they do sometimes shoot out of line…its agamble they take as they feel that the opposition has the numbers so they feel they need to try kill the move. JP Pieterson is one of the best at reading those situations.
@Chippa (Comment 45) : Good point.
@SheldonK (Comment 46) :
They had the tactics backwards.
Territorial game until min-30 and again until min-55 or 60.
Turn on the running attack after those. You’ll get a lot more bang for your buck, running against tired tacklers.
Same mistake as last year. It surprises me that the New Zealanders seem to have a better understanding of how things work at altitude.
@fyndraai (Comment 49) : It is easier said than done…in first half with energy up and crowd motivated after the anthems all guys wanna do is run everything..and i dont have a problem with that. Problem comes when guys tire and we make subs and still try to run it then things become disorganised.
@SheldonK (Comment 50) :
Subs didnt really work this week. Seemed to disrupt the defensive pattern.
We were a bit lucky with one of the tries, when Etsebeth found himself floundering in the backline after tracking back.
Problem you have when playing against the ABs is that they have an icnredibly potent last 20 minutes in them.
Nearly cost us the game on Saturday.