Ken Borland

There was deserved delight for the Pumas at Kings Park at the weekend, but dismay for the Sharks as their dismal showing saw them go down 20-10 to the Mpumalanga side in their Currie Cup match in Durban.

Dejected Sharks coach Etienne Fynn had no qualms about the Pumas being worthy winners, but clearly he was more focused on the work his team have to do to ensure they do not drop out of semi-final contention. The Pumas are now just five points behind the Sharks, with a game in hand, while the KwaZulu-Natalians also have to keep an eye on Griquas, who trail them by just three points in fourth place.

“First of all, the Pumas totally deserved their win. We were poor and we need to work on all aspects of our game,” Fynn admitted. “It’s about sticking to the plan.

“More importantly, when you get opportunities to score, you have to take advantage, and when they get into our half, we have to close them down.

“I did expect some rustiness after our long break, but not that much rustiness. We were really not sharp enough.

“It’s pretty simple to come up with a plan that works, but then you have to ask why we did not execute it and what were the reasons for that?” Fynn said.

With the Sharks still to play three games (Free State away, Lions at home and WP away) and the Pumas having four matches left, as well as the three Griquas’ fixtures to consider, the totalizator is still full of different bets as to who will join the Free State Cheetahs and Bulls in the last four.

But Fynn knows his team have to pick themselves up and bounce back fast.

“As a team, we’ve got to own this loss and move forward positively. We play Free State in Bloem on Saturday and we all know how good a side we are up against. But our season is far from over,” Fynn said.

Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber said he will be looking at the replay of their first Rugby Championship Test against Australia again just to check whether they should have been given more reward in the last couple of scrums and whether their chasers were obstructed in getting to the aerial ball, but he was clear that the Wallabies deserved to win and his team lost 26-28 because of their own ill-discipline.

South Africa were leading 26-25 in the final minutes when they dominated successive scrums, but referee Luke Pearce only ordered resets. Then, after the final hooter, the Wallabies wheeled a scrum to isolate the eighthman and won a turnover penalty, which Quade Cooper slotted from long-range, on the angle, to snatch victory at the death.

It was Cooper’s seventh penalty and he also converted Australia’s try in a faultless kicking display in his first Test in four years. But it was those seven penalties conceded which cost the Springboks, according to Nienaber.

“Conceding 23 points off the tee, that sums it up, our discipline was poor. We scored three tries to one, but we gave them 23 points and that’s the reason we lost. We did brilliantly to get back in the game in the second half, but then we lost in the 82^nd minute, again because of discipline, we conceded a penalty. Australia played well and they deserved to win.

“In our third-last scrum I thought we had good dominance, but obviously the referee saw a different picture that didn’t show clear dominance. We need to make sure our pictures are aligned with the referee’s and we knew that it would be a struggle to get our wings into the aerial contest, but it’s tough to say now if there were any line-changes, I can’t say with absolute conviction,” Nienaber said.

The Springbok coach clearly did not want to make excuses and he also did not want to use the fact that his team have recently been released from their Covid bubble and returned to normal life on the largest island in the world, and were playing in front of a crowd for the first time since the World Cup, to justify an unfocused performance.

“We weren’t great today, we were just a bit off our game, especially discipline. It was not a polished performance, so we need to fix those things we got wrong. Conceding anything beyond 10 penalties in a game makes it a real grind to win and we must be smarter than giving away stupid penalties. Our scrums were fairly solid but there were two scrums which Australia got points off at crucial times –just before halftime and then the last kick.

“But it was lovely to play in front of a crowd again, it’s what the players wanted. In the first 20 minutes we were quite dominant, we had control of the game but then we lost it. We created opportunities, we scored three tries and Sbu Nkosi and Lukhanyo Am were both over the line. But Australia are a quality side and this is a tough place to win,” Nienaber said.

The Bulls will earn deserved credit for their improvement, but the end result was still the same as they went down 28-12 to the Chiefs in a bonus point defeat in their SuperRugby match in Hamilton on Saturday.

A superb first-half display by the Bulls in which intensity crackled through everything they did – in attack they were direct and handled superbly, while their defence was physical and uncompromising – saw them claim a deserved 9-3 lead at the break.

But the Chiefs showed their class as they stayed composed and were able to pull away from the 50-minute mark, scoring three tries in an ultimately impressive victory.

The Chiefs had a terrible time in the first half trying to contain superb Bulls inside centre Burger Odendaal, who led the visitors’ resurgence with some powerful ball-carries and excellent midfield defence. It led to the home side having missed an awful 15 tackles by halftime.

But the Bulls just lacked the attacking incisiveness to convert their gains into points on the scoreboard.

When centre Jan Serfontein went inside instead of pinning his ears back on the outside following some storming runs by Odendaal in the fourth minute, it was one of many moments when the Bulls were left wondering what might have been.

The Chiefs had been caught offsides in the build-up, however, and flyhalf Handre Pollard was at least able to kick a penalty for an early 3-0 lead.

More superb carries and direct running by the Bulls, and a determined rumble forward by prop Trevor Nyakane, led to another Pollard penalty in the 10th minute, but the Chiefs dominated the first scrum four minutes later, earning a penalty kicked by flyhalf Aaron Cruden (3-6).

But the Bulls had the final say in the first half as the Chiefs tried to run the ball out of their own 22 after conceding a free kick, but were turned over, allowing the Bulls to string several phases together and earn another Pollard penalty for not releasing at the ruck.

But the tide began to turn in the 51^st minute as wing Jamba Ulengo suffered another horrible moment in defence, wing Shaun Stevenson leaving him flatfooted as the Chiefs attacked off a lineout, and then grubbering through and regathering the ball for the first try of the match. Cruden converted to give the Chiefs a 10-9 lead.

That was quickly stretched to 13-9 with another Cruden penalty after Bulls captain Adriaan Strauss stupidly went off his feet at a ruck in front of his own poles, but the visitors had a stroke of luck in the 62nd minute when a dominant Chiefs scrum was penalised for illegal wheeling, Pollard’s long-range penalty closing the gap to one point (12-13).

But it was all the Chiefs in the final 15 minutes as the Bulls suffered another late-game fade.

The Bulls lost a four-man lineout in their own 22 but a superb tackle by lock RG Snyman prevented fullback Damian McKenzie from knifing through to score. But an earlier infringement allowed Cruden to kick a penalty and stretch the lead back to 16-12.

A lovely 71st-minute move from a scrum saw scrumhalf Tawera Kerr-Barlow running at the line before putting a grubber through that McKenzie raced on to and dotted down.

Another slick backline move with two minutes remaining saw different angles of running and McKenzie bursting through, before replacement prop Atunaisa Moli charged through and reached over the line for the bonus point try.

The scrums were hard-fought transactions, but they did allow the Chiefs to release some of the pressure on them as they had the edge in that set-piece. Nyakane’s move to tighthead was again a talking point.

Lock Lood de Jager was a hardworking – if not always accurate – member of the pack, with partner Snyman also shining, while Jannes Kirsten came off the bench after 20 minutes to replace eighthman Arno Botha and made his presence felt. He should be in the starting line-up next week.

Jesse Kriel was impressive at fullback and halfbacks Rudy Paige and Pollard were on the same page.

But while the Bulls were much-improved, being gutsy losers is not a tag they or their supporters will take kindly to.

Scorers

Chiefs – Tries: Shaun Stevenson, Damian McKenzie, Atunaisa Moli. Conversions: Aaron Cruden (2). Penalties: Cruden (3).

Bulls – Penalties: Handre Pollard (4).

Pieter-Steph du Toit

Q: How did it feel for the Springboks to be booed off the field at halftime?

PSdT: Well the first half was quite a shocker and being booed, well we fully deserved it. But we were 100% better in the second half and we showed what we can do. It’s difficult to describe the feeling when you get booed like that, but it made me a bit angry, I wanted to show that we are not that bad. If you play good rugby, then the crowd gets behind you.

Q: What went wrong in the first half?

PSdT: Us players were all on the field, but we just weren’t playing, we had no energy, we all just seemed a bit tired. I do not know why that happened in the first half, I have no explanation at the moment, except that our game plan was to work around the corner and we didn’t do that as the forwards.

Q: How did the Springboks manage to pull off such an amazing comeback?

PSdT: Eben Etzebeth and I spoke about it and we never doubted that we could win, and if you believe it then you can do it. There was a mindshift – we knew we had to win, so we had to lift our game to a different level and the changes helped too, a guy like Ruan Combrinck was man of the match after playing just 40 minutes, so that’s quite an effort. We stuck to the game plan more, the forwards came into the game and we cut out the mistakes. We made a lot of errors in the first half, we didn’t keep the ball, and Allister Coetzee and Adriaan Strauss spoke to us about that and said if this was our last Test for South Africa, how would we play? Of course they were upset.

Warren Whiteley

Q: How satisfying was that second-half comeback and how did you pull it off?

WW: We’re delighted with the win and the character we showed. We definitely felt the momentum swing early in the second half and that gave us a chance. We got quick ball and we were hitting the advantage line and so creating space out wide. We managed to keep that width, make holes in the middle and earn the right to go wide. It means a lot because we were extremely disappointed after the first half, but we showed our character in the second half, which is definitely going to be a massive confidence boost.

Q: Did you feel extra pressure coming on straight after halftime in front of your home crowd with the Springboks in a hole, and do you think you’ve secured a starting place now?

WW: Every time I step on to the field it’s a privilege and I try to make sure I use every opportunity. I didn’t feel any extra pressure, but I was highly motivated to make a difference. No, I don’t think I can talk about starting places because there are a lot of very talented loose forwards in the squad – Jaco Kriel hasn’t even played a game yet and there’s a guy like Sikhumbuzo Notshe also waiting in the wings.

Q: There’s been plenty of talk already about the win being down to all the members of the Lions team you captain who were on the field in the second half … is that why the Springboks won the game?

WW: There’s no way it was the Lions team who won the game, collectively we worked together on the game plan and the style of rugby we wanted to play. The first week together was tough, we did lots of work but lost, and this week was tough too. But slowly and surely we’re getting into our rhythm, we’re still reading and learning about each other. This was only my fifth Test, I’ve never had to link with Damian de Allende before, I’ve never scrummed behind Pieter-Steph du Toit before, so I’m still learning how to play with them.