This is a hard year to pin down. Some would (erroneously) say our win record was 57%. Actually we won 7, lost 3 and drew 2 matches....that gives a win ratio of 58.3%. But it's those two draws that confuse the stats. Said another way, we had a loss ratio of 25% against very highly ranked teams. It was a pretty decent result.
Not what we want of course, but only NZ had a better year. And with both Oz and NZ losing on the YE tours, a win in Johannesburg against the ABs would arguably have left us the strongest team at the end of 2012.
That prospect looked good at the half with a 16 to 12 lead, and NZ who had just travelled from Bargie land, facing an altitude testing second half. But almost immediately Dagg showed up Taute and NZ scored....and when he planted again giving space a few minutes later, NZ scored again. From the Boks perspective Jantjies became smaller and smaller as the half progressed....to the point that he was simply irrelevant to proceedings.
There were other issues, but the failure of these two rookies robbed us of a real chance to win that game. Nonetheless, in every test we played the Boks had a good chance of victory until late into the games. Meyer's teams were never incompetent like PdV's 2010 class for example. They lacked the ability to penetrate, but were rarely troubled defensively. If Steyn had not lost his kicking form more tests would have been won.
I hope Meyer appoints a creative backline coach for 2013 somewhere along the line....with a little more explosiveness, this team could be very hard to beat.
