But his annoying tendency to attempt a pick and go at every ruck is heartbreaking to watch. He has been pinged a total of six times in 2014 for being turned over every time he attempts this. Surely he must have worked out it is a liability?
We come here to the issue of Victor Matfield. He is a peerless lineout jumper and stealer of the opposition’s ball, still, even though in rugby years he is past the veteran stage. But that is all Matfield is now. He is a one-trick pony. And this is a huge problem for the Springboks.
If you play Matfield you have to play an attritional rolling maul game from lineouts because this is his great trick. So the Springboks turned down a number of kickable penalties to force five-man lineout drives. They actually scored from one of these drives but several of them were thwarted.
And they were thwarted through smart thinking and coaching by Ireland. Twice Ireland backed away after a lineout, leaving the Springboks poised for the maul but not being able to make any contact with the opposition forwards. Other times Ireland successfully engaged in the hand-to-hand battle of stopping the Springboks maul from going forward.
The point here is that depowering the maul in a Matfield-Springboks side is rather like shaving the hair off Samson’s head.
Conversely, Matfield himself was unimpressive in his efforts, along with the other seven forwards, to stop Ireland when they scored a psychologically important mauling try of their own.
