@Smuts said in All Blacks vs Springboks II:
@pakman said in All Blacks vs Springboks II:
@mariner4life said in All Blacks vs Springboks II:
I didn't watch yesterday, so knowing the score and reading the thread I actually expected much worse.
I thought at half time both coaches would have been very happy. We were by far the better team, imposed ourselves and were in front. They had been outplayed but were close.
Absolute horror show last quarter for us. Absolutely sublime for South Africa. Well done to them I'm very fucking impressed.
The ABs were the better team for first 60.
Let’s stop this idea right here. You were in the game but you were hardly on top.
Your scrum was … under pressure, your lineout was creaking, you were losing the tactical kicking game and the aerial battle and you’d managed a solitary try (requiring 2 or 3 pieces of exceptional skill) at the cost of your playmakers taking a battering and gifting us a try. Reptitive creamings caused Least Useless Barrett to set up deeper and deeper. By the end of the half, it was hard to see where the forces of darkness might generate net points.
The good guys on the other hand could look at that half and say they just needed to keep dancing with them that brung em.
They’d bombed three clear chances without doing anything all that miraculous, one of which got called back after it was converted and another was only stopped by a sensational last gasp tackle over the try line. All while rejigging their backline to deal with injuries.
They also knew that sooner or later their work in the scrum was going to pay dividends, on the scoreboard and by opening holes around the park.
So 10-7 was a fairish reflection though not a good indicator of how the work done in the first half was likely to play out in the second.
I think the score is really overstating what actually took place.
It was 17-10 in the 62nd minute. The team collapsed in the final quarter after 4 successive lineout shockers.
The Kolbe intercept was a massive turning point. He took a huge gamble in what was pretty much an admittance of 'you got us, I have to take the risk and go for it'.
If the pass sticks there it's 14-0 to NZ. Not only was it an intercept, but NZ stop spreading the ball as they had done the first 15 minutes which was showing huge signs of success and consistently getting around the SA defence.
Instead they reverted back to box kicks and pretty much handed the game to SA. They were going to need extreme luck at that point to win playing the way they were, and it was obvious once they were down they would not be able to come back.