South African rugby coach Jake White said there was no euphoria in the Tri-Nations champions’ dressing room after their Grand Slam bid got off to a winning start with a 38-36 victory here at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday.
”Obviously we are relieved we won,” White told a post-match news conference.
”At 23-6 I thought we had done enough to get away and in the second half I thought we had done enough to get away again.
”It’s one of those things. You’ve got to realise when you play away from home that you’ve never won until the final whistle has gone. All credit to Wales, because most other sides would have given up hope.
”But six months ago we’d have bought a win,” said White after seeing his team just get enough points on the board to survive a late Welsh rally.
South Africa were crusing at 38-22 before converted tries in the 80th minute and deep into stoppage time from centre Gavin Henson and scrum-half Dwayne Peel left Wales agonisingly short of victory.
It was a rousing effort from Wales in their first home Test under new coach Mike Ruddock and a fine comeback after South Africa had been 23-6 up inside half-an-hour.
White added: ”We know where we went wrong. The players didn’t come into the changing room joyous because they’d won the Test match. They knew they had let themselves down.
”But it’s a good sign for a coach when you know you’ve not played as well as you can but you’ve got a win.
However, White said the result would not have been as close had the stadium clock shown the correct amount of injury time and lured him into thinking he could safely send on a raft of replacements.
Rather than stopping every time referee Paddy O’Brien halted play, the clock rolled on and White said: ”It’s a multi-million pound stadium. It said 80 minutes on the clock and there were still eight minutes to go. I was a bit amazed by that.
”The roof’s open, the clock’s wrong, but other than that it was fine.”
White, however, admitted his largely youthful side’s ambition had almost been their undoing.
”We started getting a bit fancy and that put us under pressure. You don’t want to stop that too much but we haven’t played for a while and maybe some of the team were rusty.”
The Springboks’ win owed much to the performance of 30-year-old full-back Percy Montgomery.
Now playing his club rugby at Welsh side Newport, Montgomery scored 23 points, including one of his team’s four tries, one of several fine handling moves.
”Without Monty we would have struggled and I’m glad he’s getting the accolades he deserves.”
Meanwhile Ruddock, having seen his team bounce back after their 53-18 defeat against the Springboks last time out in Pretoria in June, said: ”I’m very disappointed we didn’t get a result.
”They came in with settled combinations; we had a lot of new combinations and that cost us on the first 20 minutes.”
When Henson went over for his first try early in the second half, Wales were right back in the game at 22-23 down and within sight of only their second-ever win in 18 Tests against the Springboks folllowing their 29-19 Millennium victory in 1999.
But captain Gareth Thomas admitted Wales had been outsmarted.
”It seemed as if every time we got in their 22 they were killing the ball — it’s better to give away three points than seven.”
However, the fullback, now at French side Toulouse added: ”Credit to them, they were more streetwise and played the referee better.”
South Africa continue their Slam bid against Ireland next week while Wales face minnows Romania. – Sapa-AFP