Coach Rudolf Straeuli is demanding better ball retention and more aggression from his forwards in winning ruck ball when South Africa take on Samoa in their final Rugby World Cup pool game Brisbane next Saturday.
The Springboks may have scored seven tries to one in their 46-19 win over the gallant Georgians in Sydney on Friday but their post-match mood indicated that they have plenty to do as they work towards a probable quarterfinal with tournament powerhouses New Zealand.
Straeuli was far from satisfied with the showing of his largely second-string team against the willing Georgians, but saw some positives in the form of two youngsters, fly-half Derick Hougaard and flanker Danie Rossouw.
”It’s definitely not a step back, we know we have certain youngsters who were playing their first Tests, everyone has now had an opportunity and morale is good,” Straeuli said.
”Derick did play well, [but] so did other players in the team. We’ll have to wait and see … I’m not going to get into team selection for the next game, that you will get next Thursday.”
Hougaard was one of the Springbok stars with four conversions and a penalty as well as scoring a try for 16 points to put pressure on Louis Koen, who had a horror match in South Africa’s 25-6 loss to England last weekend.
Rossouw scattered the Georgian defence with his charges and picked up two tries to lay claims for more action in the tournament.
”We’ll pick an interesting squad [for the next game], guys like Danie [Rossouw] who have scored a few tries, then there are others who played against England,” said Straeuli.
There was an air of disappointment among the Springboks over their scrappy performance against the Georgians, who were urged on by the underdog support from the 34 000 Sydney Football Stadium crowd.
”Really good credit to the Georgians, they defended like Trojans and they managed to score a try when we were down to 14 men,” Straeuli said.
”The big disappointment was that we lost a bit of structure and gave away silly penalties and a yellow card. That’s not acceptable for us as a squad.”
Straeuli was none too pleased about the sin-binning of flanker Hendro Scholtz for killing the ball in the ruck early in the second half to put his teammates under renewed pressure.
Skipper and hooker John Smit paid tribute to the gutsy Georgians, but lamented some shortcomings from his forwards.
”There were stages when the forwards could have cleaned out the ball a bit more, but they [Georgia] were getting stuck in from all sides and making it a really good competition in the rucks and mauls,” he said.
”I take my hat off to them, they really competed in the rucks pretty well and made it quite difficult for [scrum-half] Neil de
Kock … it wasn’t pretty around the rucks.”
Straeuli wanted quickly to put the Georgian match behind and look forward to the challenge of Samoa, who still present a challenge for the remaining quarterfinal slot out behind England in Pool C.
”The most important thing is that we forget about this performance and look towards out next pool game against Samoa,” he said.
”We’ll definitely have to play better against Samoa and we’ll have to make sure that we keep our possession and that we look after it better and attack all the ruck ball.” — Sapa-AFP