Tri-Nations
Smit: We blame ourselves
2010-07-24 16:35
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Brisbane - South Africa captain John Smit lamented his side's discipline lapses in a 30-13 defeat by Australia on Saturday, saying the Springboks only had themselves to blame for the disastrous start to their Tri-Nations campaign.
Outside centre Jacque Fourie's third-minute yellow card for a lifting tackle left the Springboks with 14 men in the early minutes for the third consecutive Tri-Nations match. Prop BJ Botha was sent off shortly after the break for holding up play.
Smit, whose coach Peter de Villiers was unhappy with the refereeing in the first two matches against the All Blacks, brushed off the suggestion that referees had played any part in the loss at Lang Park.
"I find it pretty hard to answer that question because we haven't really played our game yet ... We've got ourselves to blame for three weeks," Smit told reporters.
"We're not on the money really on anything really.
"We're going to have dig deep, work hard and make sure we can actually put some rugby together before we assess (whether) we're in the right direction.
The Springboks conceded a raft of penalties to trail 17-3 at halftime, before mounting a second-half fightback with two tries to claw within 10 points before the hosts put the game away with a try from Will Genia five minutes before time.
"(Tackling's) probably been the poorest facet our last three weeks. And we're very realistic, how poor, how average we've been in most areas in the last three weeks," Smit said.
"We'll be the first to say that we've been poor, the defence has been poor, the breakdown's been poor."
South Africa's third consecutive loss leaves their title defence out of their hands and they will have to rely on other results going their way to stay alive.
A deflated De Villiers, who stoked controversy this week after suggesting that referees had favoured New Zealand in the first two tests, deflected a reporter's question about his fitness to coach South Africa to next year's World Cup.
"I think you must ask my bosses," he said.
"We didn't get the result that we badly wanted.
"We put some good plays together but we didn't capitalise from that."
"And in the game the Wallabies were quite sound today, hard at the ball."
"It's early days. (Our Tri-Nations) will all depend on the results going forward."