Boks need some 'soul searching'
Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:26
Facing the media: Bok coach Peter de Villiers
As well as wasting a plethora of opportunities in Saturday's 0-19 Tri-Nations defeat to the All Blacks, Springbok coach Peter de Villiers felt his side just didn't look like champions at Newlands.
Commenting on his side's performance, and subsequent defeat, a clearly disappointed De Villiers felt the Boks seemed to shy away from any resourceful play - playing a predominantly defensive game.
"It hurt a lot [the defeat]. I thought we could do better," the Springbok coach admitted.
"What bothered me a bit was there wasn't that fight [from the Springboks] that I thought there would be - the guys made a lot of mistakes, but I don't expect them at this level to go back into their shells."
Having said that, there was no denying the day belonged to the visitors, who were devastating in the contact areas and were tactical in gaining the territorial upper hand.
"Then again, the All Blacks controlled most of the game. They had a brilliant kicking game again through Daniel Carter."
"I think we were let down again by poor decisions. We didn't take the chances that were given to us, right from the beginning.
"We took the wrong chances at the wrong times, but credit to the All Blacks who put us under tremendous pressure and forced us to take those kind of chances.
"I thought we would fight back but it never came," De Villiers added.
Looking ahead to the Sprinboks' back-to-back Tri-Nations encounters against the Wallabies, the South Africans will need to dig deep after Saturday's performance if they want to remain competitive for the remainder of the competition.
"There's a few things we need to work on, you always need to do some soul searching when you play like this," De Villiers said.
"Physically, and all our other attributes - we're there. We just need to change our mindsets.
"We didn't see any body language of superiority today, to show that we are a proud rugby nation.
"Perhaps that's our biggest challenge at the moment," De Villiers added.
By Nick Pawson
