Alas, the talk of a grand plan to counter NZ's rush defense never came to fruition. Very little respect coming from the South Africans, also very little adaption. A perfect example was the kept thinking we could scrum over them instead of getting the ball out in a flash and playing on, it's obvious we wouldn't have milked a penalty after how many concessions. Dreyer was disappointingly underwhelming.
We're always so static, never coming onto the ball at pace, some bad hesitation, EJ and Hougie were totally confused at times, stalled in the midfield with ABs coming in hot. The ABs made it hard on us, but shying off the boot exposed our lack of attacking pedigree when the set piece gets disrupted or taken out of the game, we knew our backs were a problem, but the forwards were equally shell-shocked.
Playing Cas rather than Dan was a mistake, and PSDT probably should have been a starter. Marx's stalling on the lineout throw has finally been taken advantage of, and Eben cannot take his own medicine well at all, he was rattled when the ball started going over the top and NZ doggedly contesting and winning everything on target, was funny when they just decided to throw it over anyway but even that failed to a degree. It shows how much we've been relying on the lineout/scrums this year. IMO looks like we took for granted that we would be able to turn them over at the ruck and hold them up in contact, all we did was give them meters, we should have tackled the man rather- or at least the backs should have focused on the man rather than the ball more. The boks have forgotten the art of just not letting NZ players through the line and putting their heads together when they're against it. Gone are the days of pure heart and belief winning us games against NZ.
Rhule had a shocker, almost everyone said it from day one, that his appalling defence would be taken advantage of but the whole backline was stumped. Looking at the form of this NZ team and the way they were playing, we never would have realistically won this game with this team, but the set piece was handled terribly, no plan was made to shore up 14s channel, we did not manage to slow the ball down in any tangible way, passes were ridiculously shakey, delayed and wayward, Rhule failed to pressure the receiver after the kickoff numerous times giving the Kiwis plenty of time to exit or simply launch, Kriel struggled and it hurt us, we didn't adapt to Nigel as well as we could have, we did not match the pace of the game when we couldn't slow it down, Eben did not keep his team's morale up (can't reeeally blame him), scramble and sweep defense woeful, the chip was on but we couldn't execute when we did take that option, and all those damn handling errors leading to kak scrums and culminating to major Kiwi advantage.
Massive credit to the All Blacks, it looked like they were having huge fun out there, I don't think many teams could've scraped a win against them today. Aside from the enormous pressure, targeting our weak areas and inadequacies and then nullifying our strengths was brilliant and executed perfectly.
I think we're still on the right path, an absurd statement considering this is the biggest SA defeat EVER, but IMO our rugby culture and devlopment is still improving across the board. The last thing we need to do is backslide and regress into our old ways surely, NZ will obviously put us to the sword when we are still feeling out a more expansive and direct brand of rugby, especially with injuries, frankly sub-par backs and with them playing such good rugby. Newlands will tell an important tale, we'll be able to see what ACs answer to this stunning defeat will be. Seems to me that he has been absolutely stumped, questioning whether he will ever be able to come up with a game plan that can challenge the Kiwis even if he has the right personnel. It's extremely hard to be optimistic but I refuse to think that SA are beyond hope, if we keep building then perhaps by our 100th test against the Kiwis we will probably stand a better chance, but if AC looks to the past for inspiration I see only defeat ahead until we crash out of the RWC.
The only thing to do now is focus on the next game, sort out the backs as best as can be done, shake up the forwards and sort out our set-piece so that it cannot be exploited. We might have been beaten bloody by the Kiwis but there's other teams we need to look to dominate, AC can't drop the whole team and loose what progress we have made, if we get to this fixture every year and have an absolute crises each time the margin we loose by will only increase. We must carry on building and set the team before tweaking the formula rather than reinventing it, perhaps after a good EOYT and SR season we'll be in a better position to compete around this time next year.
Woeful, disgraceful, horrid bokke! Ruined my weekend with this nonsense performance but I'm not going to stop believing in them like so many of our emotional Saffa fans on social media and such have.