It is back to the drawing board for the Springboks to see where they can do things better.
That was the immediate reaction of Springbok captain Pieter-Steph du Toit after the All Blacks stunned the Boks at Ellis Park on Saturday evening, winning the first Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Test 33-16 to jumpstart the series.
South Africa scored only one try, with the New Zealanders crossing the line five times for a convincing victory. Despite dominating the first half, the Springboks fell off in the second, with the Kiwis taking control and making the most of their opportunities to seal the game.
The Boks had plenty of opportunities but could not round them off, and that is one thing they will look to correct ahead of the second clash in Cape Town on Saturday.
“We made some mistakes and could not convert our chances,” Du Toit said in his post-match interview.
“Unfortunately we shot ourselves in the foot and in a game like this those small errors and opportunities count. We will definitely have to go back to the drawing board and see what we did wrong and where we can get better.”
There are plenty of areas the Boks can improve on.
Their decision-making, when to go for points and when to keep the visitors under pressure, let them down. They had opportunities to go for the posts off penalties, or at times to keep New Zealand pinned in their 22m area, but they chose the latter.
Missed tackles, dropped balls in attack and the wrong options at certain times hampered them.
All Blacks captain Ardie Savea said they knew it was going to be a physical affair.
“I can’t fault my boys’ effort tonight, it was a boxing match,” he said.
“It came down to pressure moments and I thought we loved it out there when it was tight and we got there in the end.”
