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Blundering Boks brace for All Blacks

• Springboks face a huge challenge in next two weeks, with New Zealand undefeated in the Rugby Championship

George Byron

Alarm bells are ringing in a shell-shocked Springbok camp as they contemplate the daunting prospect of back-toback matches against a rampant All Black side in the Rugby Championship over the next two weeks. Crestfallen Bok coach Jacques Nienaber admitted he was worried about the huge challenge after his blundering team slumped to a defeat against the Wallabies on Saturday.

Alarm bells are ringing in a shell-shocked Springbok camp as they contemplate the daunting prospect of back-to-back matches against a rampant All Black side in the Rugby Championship over the next two weeks.

Crestfallen Bok coach Jacques Nienaber admitted he was worried about the huge challenge New Zealand would pose after his blundering team slumped to a defeat against the Wallabies on Saturday.

After this Saturday’s clash against New Zealand in Townsville, the misfiring Boks face the All Blacks again on October 2 in Gold Coast.

The Boks were outplayed 30-17 by a resurgent Australia side on Saturday and Nienaber apologised after what he called the team’s worst performance since losing 32-19 to Argentina in 2018.

In contrast to the stuttering Boks, New Zealand have won all four of their Rugby Championship matches, easily beating the Wallabies and Argentina in their opening four games.

The All Blacks lead the Rugby

Championship standings by 10 points from SA, who need to beat the New Zealanders in their next two games to have any chance of retaining the title.

“It’s going to be a huge challenge [against New Zealand],” Nienaber said. “There are no positives from the Wallabies game, but it’s nice to play our Sanzaar [SA, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina Rugby] teams.

“You get tested differently, and for us it is a big eye-opener in terms of that, and that is how big the challenge will be against New Zealand. We are sorry, that’s all we can say about our defeat. It was not a performance that was worthy enough for a Springbok jersey. We sincerely apologise.

“Everyone, from management, coaching staff — this was a very poor performance. We were truly beaten. In every department we got hands-down beaten defence, kicking game, attack.”

Nienaber said they would need a huge improvement if they wanted to be competitive against New Zealand.

“We just made too many errors in every aspect of our game and we need to figure out quickly what went wrong, as things don’t get any easier in the next two weeks. We were overpowered.

“The Boks have not conceded four tries in a match since 2018 and we could not respond to the challenges put up by Australia. Guys missed tackles today [Saturday] that they normally make.

“If every player in the team misses just one tackle, you will have 23 missed tackles, and at times it felt like that was happening. We executed poorly and that led to points against us as well. We did create some opportunities, but the error rate just nullified that.”

Bok skipper captain Siya Kolisi said his team’s execution had been poor.

“Too many players were making mistakes. We normally are so good at defence, but we did not do well and we have to be better and pull tighter.

“We knew it was coming and prepared for it. They just overpowered us. We did not enforce as we planned, and we did not react to that. We need to take responsibility for this performance. It was just not good enough.”

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2021-09-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

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