South Africa coach Jake White said his side were ”boys” against England’s ”men” during their 32-16 defeat against the world champions in London at a rain-soaked Twickenham on Saturday.
”Now you know why England are the world champions,” White told reporters after the Tri-Nations champions’ second successive defeat following their 17-12 reverse against Ireland the previous week.
The Springboks have beaten both Australia and New Zealand in 2004 but White said: ”This [England] is the best side we’ve played against this year, by far.”
He added: ”Physically it looked like a standard-eight group playing against matric boys. We need to look at our conditioning because in every physical encounter today — whether it was a drive in the line-out or whether it was a scrum or one-on-one contact situation — we were just dominated.”
England flyhalf Charlie Hodgson scored 27 points, including a full set of scores with his Sale teammate Mark Cueto notching a try.
But White said England’s win was built on a battle-hardened pack.
”People speak about this young England team and it rebuilding. But if you look at Joe Worsley, Danny Grewock, Steve Thompson and Julian White, it looked like a schoolboy side playing against men today.
”You walk around here [Twickenham] and you see the gym and the changing room, you see how professional they are and you realise that’s the challenge we’ve got as a team.
”We’ve done well this year and enjoyed every bit of success. I know we’ve got the right players, I can’t question their commitment, the way they played or their desire to win.
”It was just at certain stages they got smashed off the ball,” added White after South Africa — whose points came from three Percy Montgomery penalties and the full-back’s conversion of replacement wing Bryan Habana’s 73rd-minute try — lost their sixth successive Test against England.
”Last week we played badly, we didn’t finish and while people say England are a young team, they are not young at all.
”There’s a lot of guys here who would have made most World Cup squads last year but didn’t play because of Lawrence Dallaglio, Richard Hill and Martin Johnson.”
And White added the wet surface had helped England counter the Springboks’ rush defence.
”It’s very difficult in these conditions to rush up as quickly as you do on the dry fields. We’ve got to look at that.
”Having said that I like our defence, it suits the way we play, but these conditions are completely different and we’ve got to look at it because the next World Cup [in 2007] is going to be in France and played in the same sort of conditions.”
Meanwhile, Springbok captain John Smit said: ”We were just pretty much played off the park.
”It puts things into perspective. They [England] played extremely well.
”The best thing about it [the defeat] is that we’ve got three years [until the World Cup]. They realise they’ve got to graft and eat some iron.” — Sapa-AFP