The Boks managed their second win in the 2017 Rugby Championship, beating the Pumas in Salta 41 – 23. It might look like a convincing victory but in fact it was far from that.
Ill discipline cost Argentina, getting 3 yellow cards during the match, lock Tomas Lavanini getting two of those leaving Argentina to finish the game with 14 men. In essence, they played half the match with 14 men. If you take this into account, the Boks should have had this match in the bag by half time.
It makes for good reading looking at the last 5 matches: 5 victories all by 15 or more points. It’s worth a pat on the back when you compare to the 2016 Boks, but those victories came against a French team that never really pushed the Boks and then Argentina who are ranked in 10th spot on the IRB rankings. Makes you wonder what will happen in two weeks time when we start facing proper opposition.
Onto the match itself, I was disappointed in the Boks , especially in the first half. They let Argentina into the game even though they had two spells of 10 minutes against 14 men. That try that Argentina scored off the restart was really poor from the Boks, it is slip-ups like that that could cost the Boks dearly in the weeks to come.
One could think of this match as winning ugly and still getting the bonus point – that should be a positive. But in the context of the opposition, the fact that they only managed the Bonus Point score in the final 5 minutes is worrisome. Another sad stat is that this victory was Aliister Coetzee’s first win away from home. 2 years for a win away from home against the 10th ranked team in the world, that does not bode well for the weeks ahead.
Coetzee and his men have 2 weeks to take a few steps up in terms of progress to be fully competitive in Australia and New Zealand. One has to feel that momentum is on the side of the Boks, but they will need a full steam effort to utilise that and get victory in Perth, especially after that performance from Australia in Dunedin.
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Lavanini is a tool.
Collects cards like he’s trying to complete a sticker book.
Wouldn’t read too much into the dingos’ performance.
NZ played a run at all cost game from the get go for some reason. Cost them 17 points.
Yet they still won.
@McLovin (Comment 2) : Disagree the Aussies pushed the AB’s the whole game and I thought they deserved to win.
They are finally playing as a team, and there were signs of the great Aussie teams that played in the John Wales era.We haveohave played our two easiest games of the series and the Aussies have played their two hardest.
Read Eales for prescriptive text Wales. 😳
@The hound (Comment 4) : John Wales 2nd only to Eales.
@McLovin (Comment 5) : Eales commonly known as ”Nothing”,
Because nothing is perfect, was second to no one.
@The hound (Comment 6) :
Wasn’t he known as “Nobody”?
@Big Fish (Comment 7) : You could be right,potatoe,potato.
Great article, Rich. While there are positives and improvement, we need to temper our enthusiasm with the fact that our opposition so far have been poor themselves. Boks still make too many elementary errors which will be punished against better opposition.
These Boks are a team of nobodies, who seems to play better than expected.
That’s a positive.
Yes the true test will come but still think the Bok feam is way better than they were last year this time!!! Also just remember the Argies are masters of negative play and can easily drag their opponents down to that level!!!
Fact is Bokke did score an away bonus point victory and for once lead the Rugby Championship log!!!
Bokke ahead of NZ!!! I’ll enjoy that for atleast the next week or so!!!
Are there any further reports on Rob Jnr coming back to the sharks? commentators said so on weekend as well as the one report?
@Dunx (Comment 12) : Think he has signed for us, yes. Very good if Lambie is moving. If he performs like he did last year, we can move Bosch to 15 and have a very potent backline
I still think our back three is our weakest area, have been saying it since the 1st test against the French. Defensively they are not good enough for me and we will see that against better back 3’s from NZ and Aus.
@Quintin (Comment 14) :
Who do you pick though?
I understand dropping Rhule, but who to make fullback?
@Richard Ferguson (Comment 15) : Can’t see AC dropping any of those 3 for now anyway. Even if they really mess up, he will still give them a game or 2 to try and redeem themselves, so for now, that seems to be the back 3 we are stuck with. I would pick Combrink (i knowhe is not there) over Coetzee any day
@Richard Ferguson (Comment 15) : @HeinF (Comment 16) : Yeah Combrinck over Coetzee any day of the week, he’s got some serious BMT, massive boot and solid on defense and as you said it’s easy to replace Rhule on the wing, many options there.
@HeinF (Comment 13) : He is big enough to be a powerfull Centre as well. I would prefer bosch at 10.