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Boks anguish: 'Excellent effort, I thought we deserved victory'
Jacques Nienaber has praised his team’s response following last weekend’s capitulation to the Wallabies, the Springboks going to toe-to-toe with the All Blacks in Townsville this weekend and only losing out agonisingly on a 19-17 scoreline following a 78th-minute penalty kick from Jordie Barrett. The Springboks had come in for a vast amount of criticism in the days leading up their round five match with New Zealand, but the 2019 world champions responded admirably and they came within a single refereeing decision at a breakdown of clinching a win that many thought they would never come close to recording.
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“We had the belief, 100 per cent,” insisted Nienaber, the Springboks head coach whose record in charge now reads five wins and four losses, three of those defeats coming on the bounce in their last three outings. “There was not a player, not a person in our squad that didn’t believe we could beat the All Blacks today. Not one.
“We had great preparation during the week. There wasn’t a speck of doubt in our mind that we would have the opportunity to beat the All Blacks. We knew it would be a grind because you are playing No1 and No2 in the world.
“If you take our history since I was back with Rassie (Erasmus in 2018), a two-point victory in Wellington, a two-point loss against them in Pretoria, then a draw in Wellington in 2019, then a 10-point loss with lots of opportunities burnt at the World Cup and today I don’t know how many points, two points, one point, I can’t remember. It’s always going to be like that and we had 100 per cent belief.
“The effort was excellent and I thought we deserved victory. In Test matches like this you are in with a shout at the end and playing No1 and No2 in the world it comes down to small margins. I thought the effort the players put in, we put ourselves in a position to win this game. I am hurting inside because we could have pulled a result out today.
The Springboks have come in for some heavy artillery from across the Tasman ahead of Saturday's 100th clash versus the All Blacks in Townsville #Springboks #AllBlacks #RSAvNZRhttps://t.co/UNCEIMa0DO
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) September 24, 2021
“We were in a position to pull a result out of this game but if you think back to the Lions, we won the series like New Zealand won today and like Australia won the first Test in the 82nd minute kicking a goal and we did the same against the Lions. It’s probably swings and roundabouts, especially when two top teams are playing against each other. It goes down to the wire like it did tonight.”
Asked what the Springboks lacked when it came down to the crunch in Townsville, Nienaber added: “If we won this game we wouldn’t have had this question. More composure probably springs to mind. We have to be more composed at the back end of the game and almost finishing the game a little bit better because we were leading 78 minutes into the game and then maybe we weren’t as composed as we should have been.
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“That’s what springs to mind. We have got a very experienced side but we still have a lot to learn as a group. People will probably think I am mad saying that but we still need to go through the processes of being champions, finishing games out and getting to where New Zealand are with winning. That is a consistency we are striving to get to in our game still and we will have to learn very quickly in the next couple of years how to do that.”
Springboks skipper Siya Kolisi said: “It definitely does hurt… we prepared well this week and losing today was really hard. We felt we were in there and dominated the set-piece, we were good in the scrums and our maul did well. We will look at the video, see where we went wrong and what we can do to get better. Results will come. We can’t control them but we control our processes. There is no other way (to do it).”
Here's how the All Blacks rated in their tight Rugby Championship victory over the Springboks in Townsville. #NZLvRSA100 #RugbyChampionship #TRC2021 #AllBlacks #Springboks https://t.co/AJvGYuvnMm
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) September 25, 2021
Comments on RugbyPass
It was rubbish to watch, Blues weren’t even present. Did what they had to do, nothing more. Should be better next week against canes.
1 Go to commentsI’ve just noticed that this match has an all-French refereeing team. Surely a game like this ought to have a neutral ref? Although looking at the BBC preview of the Saints game, Raynal is also down as reffing that - so there may be some confusion about who is reffing what.
1 Go to commentsIf Havili can play anywhere in the back line, why not first 5. #10.
11 Go to commentsThe dressing room had already left for their summer break before they ran out in Dublin that year, and that’s on the coach. Franco Smith has undoubtedly made progress, particularly their maul, developing squad players and increasing squad depth. And against a very tight budget too. That said they were too lightweight last year and got found out against both Toulon and Munster in consecutive games. Better this season so far but they’ve developed something of a slow start habit occasionally, most notably losing at home to Northampton who played them at their own game. Play offs will ultimately show whether there has been tangible progress on last year, or not…!
2 Go to commentsAustralian Rugby has been a disaster, by not incorporating learning from previous successful campaigns. QLD Reds 2011 - Waratahs 2014. Players, coaches and administrators appoint there representatives for scheduled meetings, organisation’s agreement’s assessments and correspondence. This why a unified Rugby Union under one entity works. Every Rugby nation has taken that path. Was most difficult in the Northern hemisphere with over 100 years of club rugby before the game become professional. Took a lot of humility for those unions to eventually work together.
7 Go to commentsThough Wilson’s sacking was pretty brutal, it wasn’t just down to that Leinster game; Glasgow had a lot of 2nd half collapses that season, in the URC and Europe, and only just scraped into the playoffs. Franco Smith has definitely been an improvement, some players are delivering far more than they did under Wilson.
2 Go to commentsjesus - that front 5!
1 Go to commentsShould be an absolute cracker of a game! Will be great to see DuPont & Ntamack in tandem once again🔥
1 Go to commentsBest team ever…. To have played? These guys are still pressure chokers. Came nowhere when it counted. What a joke
69 Go to commentsMusk defends anonymous terrorism, fascism, threats against individuals and children etc etc But a Rugby club account….lock ‘em up!!!
1 Go to commentsActually the era defining moment came a few years earlier. February 2002 to be precise, when Michael D Higgins as finance minister at the time introduced his sports persons tax relief bill to the dial. As the politicians of the day stated “It seems to be another daft K Club frolic born in Kildare amongst the well-paid professional jockeys with whom the Minister plays golf” and that the scheme represented “a savage uncaring vision of Ireland and one that should be condemned”. The irfu and Leinster would be nowhere near the position they are in today without this key component of the finances.
3 Go to commentsIt is crystal clear that people who make such threats on line should be tried and imprisoned. Those with responsibility in social media companies who don’t facilitate this should be convicted. In real life, I have free speech to approach someone like Reinach and verbally threaten him. I am risking a conviction or a slap but I could do it. In the old days, If someone anonymously threatened someone by letter the police would ask and use evidence from the postal system. Unlike the Post, social media companies have complete instant and legal access to the content in social media. They make money from the data, billions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to terrorism, Nazi-ism and industrial levels of threats against individuals including their address and childrens schools being published online all from ananoymous accounts not real people. They claim free speech. Free speech for anonymous trolls/voilent thugs threatening people under false names? The fault is with the perps but also social media companies who think anonymous personas posting death threats constitutes free speech.
2 Go to commentsSo if this ain’t the best Irish team ever then who exactly is? I don’t remember any other Irish team being this good & winning a series in the Land of the Long White Cloud. Yes I may rip them often for 8 X QF RWC exits & twice not even making it to the QF, but they’re a damn good team who many think can only improve, including me!
69 Go to commentsNot a squeek out of Leinster for weeks about this match. So quiet. The first team have been quitely building for this encounter under Nienaber’s direction. All fresh, all highly motivated. They are expecting a season’s best performance from Northhampton. They will match that. They will be fresher and apparently they will have 80,000 out of the 83,000 shouting for them. I do expect Northhampton to turn up big time. Not to be missed. On a tangent it is evident how the loss of a few Premiership teams has in some respect helped other Premiership teams and England. More quality over less teams makes the teams better, which has a knock on effect on England. Not the only factor contributing to England’s rise but one of them.
3 Go to commentsOur very own monster teddy bear Ox😍💪
17 Go to commentsThis is might be the most generalised, entitled, patronising, out-of-pocket cultural indictment on a group of people you’ll ever see on what is supposedly a sports publication. I can only assume the author is weak like a woman or homosexual. I’m feeling an incredible range of emotions but I am not quite sure how to express them. I might go beat up a hockey player - assuming that’s okay with Duane and the boys? 🙂
9 Go to commentsBest thing the Welsh clubs could do is apply to join Gallagher prem surely be more exciting matches for there support than they have now.
2 Go to commentsRugbyPass writers are useless! you guys should get a real job because you all suck at writing about rugby!!!
9 Go to commentslooking forward to RWC2027 …. Boks on mission impossible for the Three-in-a-row, ABs to prove they being on par, France wishing to crown the “DuPont-era”, Ireland knocking on the Semi-Door ….. until then we’ll probably have to deal with Weird Ben’s fantasy-RWC23 (fun fact is, the drivel always creates a flooding of comments) …..
223 Go to commentsBen Smith you really make some good points in this article, the Springboks were not close to perfect and good still beat the All Blacks, imagine if they were as good as they were against France what a hiding the All Blacks would have gotten… maybe another Twickenham drubbing
223 Go to comments