Junior Boks coach: We must play for some pride

The South Africans lost 34-24 in their U20 World Championship fifth-place semi-final match at Cape Town Stadium, and must now regroup to compete for seventh place on Friday.

The Junior Boks showed enterprise on attack but this was nullified by the Argentines’ stronger performance in the line-outs.

Los Pumitas took a 14-point lead into the break, but the SA U20s made a big step up in the second half, with Jurenzo Julius testing the defence with his strong running in midfield.

Head coach Bafana Nhleko said his troops’ tendency to drop the intensity at important moments of the match spoiled several good opportunities.

Also read: Five in, three out for Boks versus Portugal

“There were lots of pressure release today (Sunday),” he explained. “We would play in moments and get good momentum, then we release the pressure with an error or poor decision making and then we would find ourselves on the back foot again.

“We started well in the line-outs, and when they started to get tired, we fell off with our detail to keep the pressure on them.

“Those are the opportunities that we lost, and those moments really hurt us. Today, the most disappointing thing was around the defence, which is usually our strong point.

“Obviously we’re down in terms of how we feel because the result wasn’t what we had hoped for. The reality is that we must get up and go again because we have a game again on Friday.”

On finishing the tournament against Wales, Nhleko added: “We know people are hurting, and the team hurt as much.

“The performance was good in parts but not good enough for the full 80 minutes, but we have one more to go, and we must bounce back and hopefully finish on a better note. Now we must play for some pride.”

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