Yes, kicking is our strength, but why keep it if it's not working for full 80 minutes? There’re two kinds of kicking, it's whether you are chipping and chasing, or just hang it up for the wingers to chase-neither was implemented for the Boks, why? Our scrumhalf Ruan Pienaar and center, Francois Steyn often kick too deep, enabling New Zealand to launch their attack straight to us instantly. Our kicking became a NZ source of attack.
Our flyhalf Morne Steyn only managed 1 out 5 kicks at goal-poor, in total we only kicked 2 in nine attempts, it's puzzling that we left out a total of 21 points and all thanks to poor kicking. Surely, we can’t blame the coach at this level you expect players to execute the plan accordingly-always. If they can’t then they don’t belong there. But why substituting ‘Beast’ Mtawarira for Deon Greyling who had a nightmare impact?
He was cited and suspended for 2 weeks, his first impact was to give away a penalty which NZ scored to draw level 8 all. After that he decided to have a go at Richie McCaw’s face and was yellow carded forcing us to play with 14 men for 10 minutes, and the ‘All Blacks’ punished us with Aaron Smith’s try, that was not all four, just when he came onto the field, he dropped the ball 2 meters to the try line with 2 minutes to go, and goes our chance and never came back.
Straight from that, he goes back and gave New Zealand a penalty unforced at death, which Aaron Cruden duly punished the plan less and idea-less Boks and the bonus point gone. Yes Morne Steyn performed poorly, but the next match is at Loftus, where Steyn plays his club rugby, so do you drop him at home for young Johan Goosen? Yes, we have inexperienced team, but there’re games to win and games to loose and that one, Inexperienced or experienced should have been won.
One thing for sure, coach Mayer, won't do away with his kicking philosophy, but one thing for sure it needs to be polished, a proper strategy and executed accordingly, if we are to succeed with it or else we might remain a laughing stock now and again. Dunedin is behind us and home turf Loftus is awaiting us, hopefully with our new fortunes.
By Fanele Mbuyazi
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