South African rugby is facing its biggest crisis since the country’s emergence from apartheid-imposed isolation.
Back-to-back defeats by France and Scotland, have left the Springboks looking anything but serious contenders for next year’s World Cup in Australia.
With a crunch clash against England looming at Twickenham on Saturday, coach Rudolf Straeuli knows his side must rapidly improve or he will find his position under threat.
”We know how we feel as South Africans,” Straeuli said after watching his radically revamped side succumb to a 21-6 defeat at Murrayfield, Scotland’s first win over South Africa since 1969.
”We don’t walk away from that responsibility. We are going to England and we are going to stay together as a team. I know it’s emotional, I think we should talk later in the week, I don’t think we should say anything now.”
Straeuli had changed more than half the team beaten 30-10 by France in Marseille. But his revamp had little effect as an experienced Scottish pack stamped its authority on the match while South Africa failed to take the opportunities which came their way.
Skipper Corne Krige admitted: ”A little bit like last week, we had opportunities but we didn’t manage to hold on to the ball.”
Despite losing to a Scotland team with none of the international reputation that France enjoy, Straeuli found some positive aspects to the defeat.
”We will have to look at it, but recalling from watching the game technically we did do better in certain aspects, we did worse in others. I think in our defence we worked well but we panicked when we had the ball,” he added.
”When you’ve got the ball, you’ve got to control it and I think most of those first cap players, they know what northern hemisphere rugby is all about now.”
Second half tries from flanker Budge Pountney and winger Nikki Walker and 11 points from the boot of New Zealand-born centre Brendan Laney earned the Scots their victory.
But things could have been very different if the South Africans, who had been lucky to go in at half-time with the score tied at 6-6, had taken advantage of their pressure early in the second period, when Scots winger Chris Paterson had to touch down under his own posts to give the visitors a scrum five yards out.
The visitors failed to transform the chance and the resulting Scottish clearance led to a penalty which Laney converted to put the Scots back in front.
Krige identified the missed chance as the decisive point of the match.
”Early in the second half we had a strong midfield right in front of their posts and if we had converted that it would have been 13-6 to us. But we lost the ball again and it was just small little things like that — we struggled to build a rhythm and that frustrated the side.
”I tried to keep the guys calm but you know Scotland put a hell of a lot of pressure on us and they had loads of numbers back. It was once again a game that slowly slips away from you and we’ll have to do something about it.
”Technically they were good and they played us in a way that suited them. They forced their game plan on to us.”
Scotland’s first try came three minutes after Laney’s penalty. A superb break down the left by Edinburgh wing Paterson ended with Craig being bundled into touch by Robbie Fleck.
Scotland won the line-out and despite some heroic defending on the line by the Springboks, Pountney was judged to have touched down after consultation of the video replay.
Laney missed another penalty chance before Scotland killed off the match, thanks to some suicidal defending by the South Africans.
First Greef spilled his third straightforward ball of the afternoon to allow Laney to set up Walker. But the winger failed to gather his pass and Scotland looked to have blown a golden opportunity.
But they reckoned without the generosity of second-half replacement Andre Pretorius. A minute after Walker’s blunder, Pretorius attempted to run the ball out of his own touch area through a mass of blue shirts. Unsurprisingly, he slipped and his desperate attempt at a pass gifted a touchdown to Walker. – Sapa-AFP