Proof that rugby is alive and well

A positive that rugby fans could take away from Saturday’s loss by the Springboks to the All Blacks in the Rugby Championship was that the South Africans didn’t virtually roll over and play dead … as they did against Australia.

The Boks brought their “A-game” to Townsville. But the reality is that the default for the All Blacks is an “A-game” … and that to beat them, you have to bring your “A+ game”.

That, sadly, we did not do. As former Boks Schalk Burger and Odwa Ndungane noted in the post-match analysis on SuperSport, this was a game which we should not have lost.

There were just too many times when, as Burger put it, we failed to “pull the trigger” and finish off promising moves with points on the board.

Among those failures by the Boks was the pointless “box” kicking when we were deep in their half and in the final seconds.

This sort of kicking can be effective if done properly; get it wrong, though, and you just gift possession to the opposition.

Yet, in the end, the 19-17 result was a reflection of a cracker of a game which could have gone either way. And it proved the sport is alive and well.