PATRICK VIGNAL, Edinburgh | Monday 11.35am.
SHRUGGING off brave challenges from the minnows of world rugby is not proving much fun for the Springboks, who are trying to keep their focus on more demanding battles ahead in the defence of their World Cup crown.
After his second-string side defeated Spain 47-3 in an uninspiring performance on Sunday, South Africa coach Nick Mallett repeated his demand the World Cup return to 16 sides capable of producing competitive fixtures.
”I don’t think anyone wants to come and see a match where the result is pretty much a foregone conclusion, whether we played well ot not,” he said.
”It was always a matter of how many points we would win it by. If we win by 40 points people say we played badly and if we win by 100, they say the opposition were hopeless.”
Lightweights have been faring surprisingly well since the start of the tournament but this has not affected Mallett’s opinion that the likes of group A’s Spain and Uruguay should not be competing with the big boys.
”We should definitely go back to a 16-team format,” he said. ”It would be better for the World Cup if you had that, with another competition going on below it.”
Mallett had kept only flyhalf Jannie de Beer from the team that beat Scotland 46-29 in their opening match and the reserves did little to convince him to make changes in his first XV for the quarter-finals.
Just one of South Africa’s seven tries came from open play.
Captain Andre Vos, scorer of two tries from number eight, insisted the lack of flair from the green and golds was not a result of poor motivation.
”We knew this would probably be our only chance to play in the tournament so it wasn’t a lack of hunger,” he said.
”We wanted to score early on but we couldn’t. We were perhaps a bit over-eager and once the handling errors started, it was difficult to put a hold on it.”
The 4,769 people who turned up to see the reigning champions all but clinch a place in the quarter-finals had to wait for 31 minutes to see points on the scoreboard.
”The fact that we didn’t score in the early stages is why we didn’t get that many points in the end,” Mallett said. ”It took us too long to get going. It was not complacency, the guys really tried hard but they just couldn’t score.”
South Africa must now play another match they will regard as meaningless, on Friday against Uruguay, before a likely quarter-final clash against England.
The Springboks coach, who has already said he felt a seeding system should prevent such a mouth-watering contest from happening as early as the quarter-finals, had obviously watched the Jonah Lomu show on Saturday with great attention.
”It was an excellent game of rugby which was worthy of a quarter-final, a semifinal or even a final,” he said. ”Most games between top teams have been quite tough.
”I think it’s easier to play good rugby against strong opposition. When you play a team that’s not so good you’re in a difficult situation, really. It’s hard to play well.” — Reuters