Well, watched the game again. Time to adjust some of the opinions about the players. No one played...badly.
Esterhuizen missed Lenny in the first half. He tossed the intercept pass that wasn't a try in the end, just holding on too long when he should probably have just gone with the short ball to Wiese next to him. And then to end the game he was delaying a pass, looking for Quan to run onto the ball (or perhaps he wasn't and that's what caused the confusion) and it ended in obstruction. There was definitely some confusion going on about what the play was there. For the rest he was fine - made his tackles (12 made, 2 missed), got good go forward (38m on the carry mostly in traffic), put Sacha into space for the break that ended in Edwin's almost try off the cross kick, again threaded a beautiful pass through the Aussie defense to Horn to put Hooker into space down the touch. A few weak moments, but not nearly as bad as it seemed on first watch.
Moodie I thought was good apart from dropping the ball that Jorgenson ran away with.
Fassi had some good moments as the game progressed, but his two big bungles were dropping the sitter of a pass when the Boks looked to have created numbers wide, and also his poor high ball effort that let Lenny in for his second.
Jantjies gave us nothing. Not terrible, but again, no edge. Why is he there? Williams is better, Krappies is better, Papier is better. How many scrumhalves do we need? Why? Are we going to play a different scrummie every game at the WC while being a hooker short again? Stop this stupid shit.
Pollard defended well and threw a good pass to put Moodie into space past Lenny for Edwill's try, but he was largely anonymous.
Horn looked rusty to all hell and struggled.
Most of the other guys were decent, but Aus matched us blow for blow physically and in fact probably had the edge. Elrigh tackled tirelessly, but he brings nothing else, you never see him in a position to do anything outside of the basics. Likewise Marco. These guys will hold their own, but they don't give you an edge.
Lood was very physical in the tackle and put in some great stops, but made a bad knock when we were on the attack in the 22.
There is a sequence of costly mistakes for the Boks at around 77:03 (when the ball goes wide to Hooker as I referred to in my Esterhuizen comments).
From left touch we go wide right, Moodie to Marx who has Ox next to him and Edwill unmarked wide. I don't know if that kind of 30m pass is in Marx's arsenal, but even a wonky pass to Edwill probably sees him run it in. Marx hangs on instead, nearly makes it to the line to be fair, but from the breakdown Krappies is trapped in possession, ball goes loose and Wright kicks ahead. More time lost when we had a man open for a wide pass. Horn recovers, ball to Edwill who chips it and it goes out. More time lost for the lineout. Aussie luckily fluff their play otherwise that chip away of possession would have been game over and eventually Ox scores, but it's now 79:37 and one kickoff to go with the clock in the red, ends with the confusion between Andre and Quan.
But, the biggest problem for the Boks is the stat that comes onto the screen around 67 minutes: Aussies made only 54 tackles at that point against the Boks 147. The possession and territory stat before that last 10 minutes was in the sixties for the Aussies. They dominated the game, plain and simple, and without a dominant scrum the Boks couldn't get into it. Given that the Aussies dropped most of their attacking ball in the first half, screwing up at least two big overlaps wide and they still ended up drubbing us, just safe to say the Boks were well and truly beaten, with the 42-17 scoreline before the string of cards not an unfair reflection.
For the Aussies, Lonergan was outstanding in terms of game management. Their loosies comfortably had the edge on us apart from Paul Div, who gave us parity with Fraser. The Bledisloe should be a cracker - the Aussie pack has become a force to be reckoned with.
