Rassie laments Manie’s missed penalty: ‘Not the fairy tale ending’

While Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus didn’t want to put the blame on Manie Libbok for the team’s 29-28 Rugby Championship defeat to Argentina in Santiago on Saturday, he admitted afterwards that had the replacement flyhalf’s last-gasp penalty succeeded “we’d be sitting here all smiles”.

Libbok, who replaced Handre Pollard at the start of the second half, enjoyed a decent outing, but missed the vital penalty kick at the end which saw the Pumas snatch a one-point win and keep the competition alive.

With one round to be played, with the Boks and Argentina meeting in Mbombela this coming Saturday, the world champions have 19 log points, to Argentina’s 14.

In Santiago on Saturday, the Boks went 17-0 up early, but trailed 26-22 at half-time after conceding four tries in a horror 20-minute spell.

‘Disappointment is big’

“It’s a bad one to lose. The game shouldn’t have gone down to the wire, with one man having to kick it over,” said a disappointed Erasmus afterwards, referring to Libbok’s missed penalty.

“Not just for us to win the game, but for him personally … I was hoping he’d kick it over. He kicked so well the whole week, and in warm-up, he slotted everything. But’ that’s pressure.

“If he kicked it over we’d all have smiles here and say we brought young players over here and won and gained a lot and say Manie has his confidence back, but it’s not the fairy tale ending … the disappointment is big.

“He’ll get a lot of flak, we all know that. He’ll have to find a way to manage that and I’m sure we’ll all get a lot of flak for him missing that kick, but it shouldn’t have been on the last kick for us to win the game, we should have done it much earlier.

“We had lots of opportunities where we lost the ball in lineouts, inside their 22m area, gave away a penalty. It was not a great display.”

Credit to Argentina

Win or lose the Rugby Championship this year, Argentina have made a massive statement with wins against all three former Southern Hemisphere “super-powers”, the Boks, All Blacks and Wallabies.

Erasmus said coach Felipe Contepomi had done a tremendous job with limited resources.

“Well played to Argentina; they deserved to win the match.

“They’re a country who don’t have a franchise competition yet Felipe has brought them together and they’ve played excellent rugby this competition.

“They took their chances today and made us pay when we were down to 14 men (when Kurt-Lee Arendse was off after getting a yellow card).

“Like us in South Africa, they play with lots of passion and pride, heart and soul. They beat the All Blacks away, they smashed Australia. They threw everything at us in this game and came out with the positive result at end.

“But, this was also a game we could have won.”

The teams will travel to South Africa on the same flight on Sunday and meet again in Mbombela this Saturday, with kick-off at 5pm.