Disappointing Win

A frustrated Rassie Erasmus said he would reconsider his pre-planned selection for the second Castle Lager Tour test in Gqeberha next week, after a “disappointing” 42-24 victory over Italy on Saturday.

The Boks scored six tries to three but couldn’t build on a 28-3 halftime lead and the Springbok coach didn’t hide his disappointment with the performance.

“I guess it’s a positive that we scored six tries but we’re frustrated,” the Springbok coach said. “I didn’t pick up in the week that this was the way we were going to perform but it’s all fixable – but it’s definitely frustrating.”

Erasmus said he would reconsider his selection because of the performance and to handle the challenge posed by a young and hungry Azzurri.

“Internally we’ve announced that 13, 14 players that will definitely get a run next week, and that we’d build the bench or starting line-up around those guys,” he said.

“We won’t discard those guys but some of them might move to the bench, some of the real standout players who played today might start again.

“The make-up of the team may change to handle the physicality that Italy threw at us. You’d think a team that made 120 tackles in the first half would break in the second half.

“But it’s a team that’s fit and passionate and we have to make sure that the team that we put out next week is not just a team that can go 50 or 60 minutes it must be a team that can go 80 minutes.”

The Boks looked like they might have broken Italy’s resistance with their fifth try at the start of the second half. But the visitors finished the more strongly.

“It was a very frustrating game,” said Erasmus. “We knew they would man up, and they certainly manned up in most departments; scrums, mauling, defence, attack – it was a proper Test match.

“When we were 28-3 up and we scored that try was disallowed for obstruction, I thought we might have them, but then we lost some momentum.

“I don’t think we have too many excuses and it certainly makes the selection for next week interesting – they could easily have come back into it at the end. They performed really well – we definitely tried to impose our game on them, and they didn’t allow it.

“The frustration was not only about not dominating, but also that the game was stop-start, stop-start. It felt like we didn’t get any intensity in the second half.

“The positives are that we won; that we scored tricks even with a maul that didn’t function, even with a breakdown that wasn’t great on attack, even with a counterattack that wasn’t awesome, we still scored six tries.”

Erasmus said the selectors would have to do some hard thinking before naming the second Test team: “We have to pick nine guys to go with the others and we have to decide whether they start or come off the bench. Damian De Allende has a bit of a hamstring but luckily, we don’t have any injuries, just a few bruised egos.”