After last week’s double header, the Rugby Championship saw just one match take place this weekend. In a normal year, this match would have taken place in Argentina, but the continued impacts of COVID meant that the match was played at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, which hosted last week’s bonus point win for the Springboks.
While the venue may have stayed the same, both teams were heavily changed, and despite a positive opening couple of minutes from the Pumas, their indiscipline soon began to cost them and Handré Pollard duly kicked 3 penalties in the opening quarter. However a Jasper Wiese penalty from the restart gave Argentina a penalty deep in the South African half and Domingo Miotti put his team on the board off the tee. Pollard soon extended the lead back to 9 with another penalty, and just minutes later added another as Rodrigo Bruni was sent to the bin for his team’s persistent offending. Despite being a man down though, it was the Pumas who ended the half with the chance to score as Miotti lined up a penalty from close to halfway, but he was unable to hit the target and the Pumas went into the break down 3-15.
Much like in the first half, it was the Pumas who started better after the break, and they had the chance to open the half’s scoring with a Miotti penalty after Pollard took out Juan Cruz Mallía in the air, only for the young fly half to pull it to the left. However the Boks soon found themselves putting together phases in the Argentina 22, and when Willie le Roux came on a late loop from the blind side, he successfully created an overlap to send Makazole Mapimpi over in the corner. The Springboks were over for another try just minutes later as they secured their own ball at a lineout 5m from the Argentina line and ripped apart the Pumas’ maul defence for Malcolm Marx to go over. With substitutes now coming on, the game began to open up as the Boks looked to secure the bonus point, and the Pumas began to get more possession and space in which to use it, and when the Pumas drove a maul up to the Springbok try line just after the hour it looked like they would finally score, only for a handling error as the maul went to ground. As the clock ticked into the red, the Pumas had another chance to score as replacement back row Juan Martín González was released down the left wing, but his pass back inside was slightly behind Santiago Carreras, who was unable to collect cleanly and the loose ball fell into the hands of Lukhanyo Am, who cleaned things up, and lock Tomás Lavanini added yet another yellow card to his Test record or a late shot on Pollard. With the clock in the red, the Boks could have kicked the ball out to end the match but chose to go in search of the bonus point one last time, only for Pollard to miss touch, allowing the Pumas to work the way back down the field, and when they found themselves on the try line, Pablo Matera came crashing in on an inside line, and when he found contact on the line, he successfully managed to spin his body round to get to ground and score his team’s first try of this year’s tournament, with Nicolás Sánchez kicking the conversion to end the game as a 10-29 victory for the World Champions.
Paying the penalty
With the amount of penalties the Pumas were giving away, there was no chance for them to even get in the game for much of the match, let alone compete for the win! while the odd penalty is acceptable, the Pumas were playing on the edge far too frequently and were duly punished, with Handré Pollard’s kicks alone enough to win the match. But the real issue was their discipline at the lineout, where they tried every possible tactic—both legal and illegal—to disrupt the maul, with the outcome either being the maul trundling on or a penalty to the Boks. And of course the World Champions took every advantage of this, regularly kicking their penalties to touch and working their way down the field in a matter of phases as the Pumas illegally halted their mauls.
If you are struggling to defend the lineout and driving maul, then you need to limit the number of times the opposition get to utilise that set piece, and that means remaining disciplined.
Mishandled
Despite all-but playing themselves out of the game, the crazy thing is that the Pumas still had the chance to somehow come away with an undeserving victory. Argentina made a number of chances, only to shoot themselves in the foot at the wrong moment.
In an alternate universe, Gloucester wing Santiago Carreras could have come away with a brace of tries today, with the first one coming in the opening half as he ran a clinical line off the drifting Santiago Chocobares, only for the centre to delay his pass too long and throw it forward. Then with the clock in the red at the end of the game, it looked like he was certain to score as Juan Martín González played the ball inside to him just short of the line, but the pass was a little behind him and he was unable to take it cleanly, leading to it being knocked on. If the first chance was a possible try, then this was a guaranteed try.
Similarly, the Pumas would surely have scored just after the hour had they been more patient when their maul went to ground just short of the line, but rather than the first man in securing the ball, they tried to take it themselves and fumbled the ball forward, wasting what to that point had been the best chance of the game.
And sadly for the Pumas, there was yet another wasted chance in the latter stages of the second half. As the game opened up, Argentina brought their attack to the left and Chocobares fed Lucio Cinti, who looked like he may have the pace to beat the covering defence to the corner flag, only for play to be called back as Chocobares’ pass again drifted forward.
To me, these errors came largely as a result of 2 things. First of all, their lack of control in the game meant that they were almost panicking and trying to score as quickly as possible. But probably more costly was the constant chopping and changing of the team, which limits the chance for players to learn their exact timings to play off each other.
Despite the indiscipline, this was a much better performance from the Pumas than last week, expect to see further improvement as the tournament goes on.
Stunted
In theory, the Springbok backline had a good balance to it, with 2 highly physical centres in Am and Damian de Allende, 2 elite wings and 2 playmakers in Handré Pollard and Willie le Roux. Yet despite this, there was only one time that the Boks really had success going wide: when le Roux’s late loop set up Mapimpi’s try. Other than this, the South African attack looked very poor, generally just going sideways without committing defenders, and allowing the Pumas’ defence to drift with them and cut down the space outside.
First things first, congratulations to the Boks for actually trying to play rugby a couple of times, but the attempts were poor. De Allende and a forward or 2 running dummy lines would immediately force the Pumas defence to hold their positions and create the space for the wings to exploit. Hopefully like with the Pumas, we will see the Springboks continue to try and play more expansive attacking rugby with more success as the tournament goes on.
Eyes on the Ball 