Wales were left to rue their error-strewn performance in their 33-16 loss to South Africa, who will be looking to round off their autumn tour in style next week against France.
South Africa won four tries to one at the Millennium Stadium and played the last 10 minutes with 14 men after fullback Percy Montgomery was sent off after picking up two yellow cards, but they never looked in danger of losing to a valiant Welsh side that struggled to create scoring opportunities.
Wales pulled back a late try through replacement Ceri Sweeney, with Stephen Jones getting the rest of the points with his trusty right foot, but the Springbok back-row, led by the robust number eight Juan Smith, outplayed their counterparts.
Springbok coach Jake White, however, was far from pleased with his side’s performance despite expressing his obvious pleasure at beating the Six Nations champions.
”We’ve played better than that,” White said. ”But having played at 16-3 with 14 men for 20 minutes of the game, I’m happy. It’s probably good enough to move on to the next country,” which will be France next Saturday.
White was full of praise for his rookie half-back pairing of debutant Meyer Bosman and Michael Claassens, making his first start after four previous appearances off the bench.
”I can’t applaud him enough,” White said of Bosman, who controlled the game well, stepped up to kick an important touchline conversion and filled in at full-back when Montgomery was off the pitch.
”He showed a lot of maturity for a 20-year-old playing in his first Test match.”
White also had words of praise for Bryan Habana after the winger rebounded from a poor performance in the Springboks’ 34-23 win over Argentina a fortnight ago to turn in an electrifying two-try display.
”He showed why he’s been picked. His body language was a lot different from that in Argentina.”
Wales coach Mike Ruddock was magnanimous in defeat but admitted he could not fathom out why his side continues to make so many mistakes around the park.
”Well done to South Africa, they’re a quality side,” said Ruddock.
”Whenever we made an error they punished us. The effort was there, but we just weren’t accurate enough.
”We’re working hard to get the precision that’s missing at the high end at the moment,” he said of his Grand Slam winning side that was missing a raft of senior players through injury. We just didn’t make those errors last year.”
Ruddock also admitted he was ”concerned” by his side’s try-shy performances of late, after the team notched up 17 tries to win last year’s Six Nations tournament with an exciting brand of free-running rugby.
”We haven’t changed anything. We want to play a high-tempo rugby with width. We haven’t been accurate and it’s difficult to pinpoint why.”
Ruddock, looking ahead to next Saturday’s game against Australia, said the Welsh camp remained optimistic.
”We want to win. We haven’t been good enough. We’re disappointed, hurting, but we’re an optimistic group… and we still believe we can challenge next week.”
Welsh captain Gareth Thomas was also upbeat.
”We wanted the forwards getting clarity and they did that… against the most physical side in the world,” he said.
”We haven’t had the perfect preparations and we’ve had a lot of injuries, but the commitment was brilliant and we dug in for the full 80 minutes.” – Sapa-AFP