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Kolbe magic and defense win for Boks

Posted on by Larry
Kolbe magic and defense win for Boks

A try from man of the match Cheslin Kolbe saw the Springboks beat an English team who brought their A-game as well as their own unusually high penalty count to score a 29-20 win in their big match of the tour at Twickenham on Saturday.

It was far from the best Bok performance and they had to rely heavily on a determined defense in the second half. They needed that defense as the Boks kept conceding double penalties, allowing England to spend most of the second half on South African soil.

There was a lot going on in the first hour for England, who got off to a dream start when Ollie Sleightholme scored a try after just three and a half minutes. The selection of tall Freddie Steward at wing-back worked out a dream for them, with the big man winning the match in the air, while Marcus Smith pulled the strings at fyhalf and the hosts also turned up much better than expected in attack.

However, the Boks once again found a way to win, this time through some moments of individual brilliance plus the commitment shown in defending when England were ahead by one point and looked as if they would take control of the match in the third quarter can take over.

GREAT ADVERTISEMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL RUGBY

It was a pulsating and highly entertaining Test match that was a great advertisement for what international rugby can produce. In some ways the first half was a bit like last year’s World Cup quarter-final between the Boks and France. Six tries were scored on that occasion, this time there were five: three for South Africa and two for England.

It was a thrill a minute. First came Sleightholme’s try, with flyhalf Smith pulling Eben Etzebeth out of the defensive line to prevent what he probably thought would be a drop goal attempt. Smith moved to the right but switched to the left and the Bok defense were wrong-footed as England’s left wing went over the corner.

Smith’s conversion made it 7-0 to England and against another team you would expect the opposition to be a bit wobbly. But not the Boks, who kept their composure and after a brilliant aerial win from Kolbe it was scrum-half Grant Williams who produced the X-factor moment needed as he ripped through the England defense past the edge.

Once he got past the first line of defense there was no chance of England stopping him and he went to the posts to complete a score which, with Manie Libbok’s conversion, reduced the Boks to 7-all after 11 minutes.

It was one of those games where both teams made mistakes on the restarts, and England were back in the lead 10–7 after 14 minutes when Pieter-Steph du Toit was awarded a penalty in an easily kicked position for Smith.

LIBBOK MAGIC CREATED A THIRD TRY

If Du Toit felt bad about that, he quickly had a smile on his face. An English clearance was shot down by Eben Etzebeth, after which Du Toit charged down Smith’s scrambling clearance and chased the ball down to slot into the goal wide of the left flank. Libbok hit the posts with the angular conversion and missed a long-range penalty just before half-time, but he did provide his magical moments.

Chief among these was what created the third Bok try, with the Boks exploiting a penalty advantage in England’s red zone by setting up Libbok’s cross kick that left Kolbe with space around him and only one defender to beat. Kolbe will always come up trumps in that situation and he easily misled the England player into crossing for a try which Libbok converted to make it 19-10 to the Boks after 21 minutes. With England leading 7-0, this meant that the Boks had scored 19 points to three in no time and at that point it looked like those who had predicted a one-sided match would be proven right.

INDISCIPLINE

That this did not happen may have a lot to do with the moments of Bok indiscipline that cost them their position in the field that day. Most of that was in the second half, but one example in the first half was Aphelele Fassi’s neck roll, with England booting the ball from the penalty box into the Bok 22 and from there setting up a try for flanker Sam Underhill.

Underhill was singled out as a liability for the Boks at the breakdown, and he succeeded in his mission, preventing the Boks from picking up their sought-after momentum. The Boks did get two scrum penalties in the first half and were the superior team at that stage, but there weren’t that many set scrums in the first half.

The Boks went into half-time with just a two-point lead and much depended on how they started the second half. It looked like they had given themselves a dream start when Kurt-Lee Arendse crossed the left corner two minutes into the break after Fassi had created the extra man as he crossed the line.

However, TMO Ben Whitehouse disallowed the try as he judged Fassi’s pass to Arendse to be marginally forward. The Boks then conceded a penalty which was converted into a double penalty, and it looked like England had scored a huge psychological blow as they crossed the line at the other end.

But apart from the fact that the long pass to Henry Slade looked suspiciously forward, Whitehouse was on the money this time when he spotted a neck roll from Maro Itoje in the build-up. So that try was disallowed and when England eventually went one point ahead through a Smith penalty, the Boks might have thought they had won that battle given the pressure they were under at the time.

POLLARD DEVELOPS DEJAVU FOR ENGLAND

There were some uncharacteristic errors from the Boks, such as Malcolm Marx knocking over his first lineout and a few later, and it all left the Boks playing deep in their own half for long periods. But as they often do, they managed to resist the attack, and when Handre Pollard, who came on for Libbok after 45 minutes, was presented with a long-range penalty attempt in the 58th minute, it was deja vu for England, who were advancing lost to the World Cup final by a similar long kick to the ice-cold South African in last year’s semi-final in Paris.

The kick bounced off the crossbar and the Boks were back in the lead. And then they were only ahead for a few minutes as in the 63rd minute Kolbe used his pace to outwit the English defense after a strong break from Damian de Allende.

England continued to apply the pressure and the Boks found themselves in trouble when Gerhard Steenekamp was penalized in the 68th minute, but Pollard’s excellent touchline conversion from the second Kolbe try saw the Boks lead by more than a score going into the final 10 minutes. . There was some slump from England in that they made some questionable decisions, such as not kicking a penalty against the posts with eight minutes to go. England are a team known for losing games in the last ten minutes, so in a position where they were nine down going into that period, it never really seemed likely that they would take the game away from the world champions.

Scores

South Africa 29 – Tries: Grant Williams, Pieter-Steph du Toit and Cheslin Kolbe 2; Conversions: Manie Libbok 2 and Handre Pollard; Punishment: Handre Pollard.

England 20 – Tries: Ollie Sleightholme and Sam Underhill; Conversions: Marcus Smith; Sanctions: Marcus Smith 2.