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Heat on Div as Boks go cold

Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer in Edinburgh

Edinburgh – After the deceptive hiatus of a couple of hopeful tour weeks, I think we can say the great unease is back in Springbok rugby.

The high road was Scotland’s at miserable Murrayfield here on Saturday, as the relative minnows of modern Six Nations rugby dramatically claimed the scalp of the defending World Cup champions and a supposed big ‘un of the southern hemisphere.

In pipping the Boks 21-17 with a grinding, marvellously tenacious performance throughout their ranks, the Scots also banished the painful memory of surrendering nearly 50 points to the All Blacks only a week earlier.

The immensity of that turnaround in fortune will be no comfort at all to South African rugby fans, bearing in mind that the World Cup on New Zealand’s very soil looms in 2011.

So where does all this leave embattled Bok coach Peter de Villiers and his lieutenants?

Only the head honchos at SA Rugby know whether achieving the Grand Slam was the essential requirement for De Villiers to get a passport through to the World Cup after the Tri-Nations near-fiasco a little earlier in the year.

Whether this was the case or not, bungling the challenge at the supposedly modest Scottish hurdle will not be absorbed in a particularly compassionate manner back at headquarters in Newlands, you can be sure.

Maybe, too, some cynical observers will be tempted to say that the Boks had only got to the halfway stage unscathed in their Slam bid through sheer grit and mongrel anyway – not because they showed any genuinely exciting new dimensions.

By and large they had won “ugly” in Dublin and Cardiff, remember, and the monumental effort required in holding out doggedly for both triumphs played a role, I suspect, in the Scots finishing notably the stronger outfit – it was a murderous day of scrumming for the respective front rows -- for this famous upset on Saturday.

Tour captain Victor Matfield had called for greater precision in the build-up to Murrayfield; instead his side arguably went backwards in that respect, with patience in fatally short supply and uncertainties in playing approach to fit the grim conditions also all too evident sometimes.

In fairness, the Boks had seemed to pick a side geared for a pretty dry day, and until a couple of hours before kick-off this city had experienced a fair spell of exactly that sort of weather.

But then the heavens opened to an ever-increasing extent, to the point that underfoot conditions became notably treacherous and any intention to put the ball merrily through hands had to be hastily abandoned.

That said, the Boks still fielded enough crusty customers in the pack, particularly, to be able to make necessary adjustments, yet the key tour dream ended in ruin.

It was true that some of old refereeing nemesis Stuart Dickinson’s penalty calls toward the business end of the game seemed harsh on the Boks, and Matfield was not slow to repeatedly voice objection.

But as the skipper gradually lost his rag, so too did the muddied soldiers around him as the pipes got louder and louder and Scottish passions reached fever pitch while the mercury dropped.

Every now and then the Boks produced some awesomely compelling rolling mauls, which offered just a hint that they might continue their trend on this particular northern crusade of nicking the spoils from a see-sawing encounter.

 Small consolation, too, was that they did register the game’s only try, although it had a strong element of good fortune because substitute loose forward Willem Alberts, at the back, had gleefully grabbed an attacking, overthrown lineout ball intended for Matfield.

Speaking of lineouts, this normally chest-thumping aspect of Bok rugby got progressively worse here, with hooker Bismarck du Plessis – otherwise so busy and muscular for the best part of the tour so far – having a rare personal nightmare in the second half before he was subbed for Adriaan Strauss.

The combative Sharks player was also pinged, after a touch judge’s report to Dickinson, for an alleged punch late in the game which crucially transferred pressure from one end of the park to the other – Scotland stayed on the offensive more or less from that moment on.

De Villiers was unusually muted but also suitably honest afterwards: “The things that had worked for us up to now ... getting our first-phase ball and holding onto it ... we neglected those kind of things tonight.

“The circumstances weren’t very good and Scotland made use of them much better than us – well done to them.”

Matfield, meanwhile, conceded: “We’d been under pressure; everyone wants us to be more expansive. But the weather, the way it was, didn’t allow that. Maybe we were thinking too much about that (aspect) rather than the accuracies I’d been talking about beforehand.

“The Scots put us under pressure and when you’re under pressure you make mistakes.”

Asked by Sport24 what blowing the Grand Slam opportunity meant in the context of the taxing England challenge at Twickenham next Saturday, Matfield said defiantly: “We start again on Monday; new energy, new focus after mourning tonight’s (defeat). It’ll be exactly the same as any other week.”

Over the next few days, though, vultures will be circling with renewed intent above the head of Peter de Villiers ...
 



Springbok wing Gio Aplon is action during the 21-17 to Scotland at Murrayfield (Gallo Images)
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