Deans laments finishing woes

The Wallabies had the perfect of starts, and were gifted tries by some sloppy defence and mistakes by the Boks as a stunned Loftus Versfeld were shellshocked in the opening salvos of the game.

But the Boks showed their experience to surge back into the game, and finished the stronger side as they outscored their opposition 37-10 in the 70 minutes that followed that and always looked in control in the latter part of the game.

The loss will up the ante on Deans in Australia, who have never won at Loftus Versfeld and last won on the Highveld in 1963 as the team now moves to Bloemfontein for the second game in South Africa.

Deans was honest in his assessment that he never felt as if his side had won the game after they went so far ahead early on.

“I’ve been in Tri-Nations rugby for too long to think we had won it. First and foremost we didn’t hold onto the ball in the latter stages of the game. We didn’t spend more time in possession than the Boks did and critically at the end when we built some pressure we weren’t able to convert,” Deans said in summing up his side’s faults in the match.

“We came up short in the setpiece and while we finished well early on, we couldn’t be as successful later on in the game.”

Captain Rocky Elsom said his team were disappointed after they couldn’t sustain the early lead his side had put on the Boks.

“We got away like we wanted,” Elsom said.

“We’ve also been around long enough to know they would come back at us hard. We needed to hold onto the ball at the end, and we didn’t do that. Not winning the ball back at the end of the game cost us and the quality of the ball we received later on wasn’t what we wanted.”

Deans pointed to a crucial lineout loss in the 70th minute, inside the Bok 22 when Victor Matfield stole the ball while the Wallabies were mounting an attack, as one of the key moments in the loss.

“There are critical moments and questions we will have to answer. There was a restart we coughed up that we didn’t need to. It’s easy to highlight these when you don’t get home but in terms of the bigger picture, we didn’t finish some of the opportunities we were given as effectively as South Africa and we turned over too much ball.”

Deans said the team would take stock in Durban before heading up to Bloemfontein on Thursday. “The context of this match will be taken into account and we will have things to focus on. There will be a review and this week is a very important one for us.”

Deans admitted being worried about lock Nathan Sharpe, who left the field with a “rolled ankle” but whose injury situation would only be known on Sunday.