Ben-Jason Dixon admitted the Springboks succumbed to a degree of “slackness” in South Africa’s nail-biting victory over Scotland in their Nations Championship clash at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night.
The Boks dominated the first 20 minutes of the encounter to lead 14-0, but a willing Scotland never submitted to the world champions, battling back to parity by the end of the first half. The Boks once again pulled away to a more convincing 35-14 lead by the 67th minute, but quickfire tries by Josh Bayliss and Ben White, both converted by Finn Russell, pulled the visitors back into the competition at 35-28 by the 71st minute.
The Boks would go on to win the encounter 42-28.
The oscillation in match momentum was by and large due to some porous defending by the Boks, who let slip tackles in the midfield. On a handful of occasions, the Scots made threatening line-breaks to storm through the centre, only for desperate scramble defense to halt their advance.
Errors from the Scots at crucial exchanges and timeous intervention by the Boks in their 22, kept the latter’s tenuous lead intact. The Scots beat 46 defenders on the night and made 12 clean breaks, while the Boks slipped 46 tackles for a 77% tackle success.
Musing after the victory, Dixon was full of praise for the Scots, who truly tested the hosts in crucial departments.
“It was really tough and you have to move well and you have to tackle well, and we actually did not do that a lot or well today,” said Dixon.
“We had a lot of missed tackles and they did really well. They had strong, good ball carriers. We will have to do better with that.
“Our plan was to fill the field because they play so quickly and we thought they might get around us. They did really well to sometimes get through us in the middle, so credit to them.”
Dixon was arguably the parable of the match. He went through several highs and lows as the fortunes of the match were decided. He replaced lock Cobus Wiese in the 32nd minute, and early in the second half, he received a yellow card for foul play at ruck time.
“I got on for eight minutes during the first half and I was blowing after that, and we conceded twice,” said Dixon. “I had hoped to make a bigger impact but I feel like they did well to get back into the game during the first half.
“And then in the second half, we came out and I got a yellow card early. With 14 players, I think we did really well to turn the momentum of the game and to get the ascendancy again.
“When I got back on, we had a bit of momentum and we managed to convert it. We got ahead on the scoreboard and it felt like we could really close the game, but unfortunately, we let them back in.
“Scotland were really exceptional. They are great ball carriers and they made the best of those breaks to make us pay due to our slackness,” he concluded.
