South Africa’s flawless opening 40 minutes delivered 45 points on the way to a 66-7 win in Turin, as Juventus’s home witnessed near-perfect rugby that left the Azzurri without a single dominant carry until the second half.
Here’s our five takeaways from the fixture.
The top line
This was always going to be a pretty steep mountain to climb at the foot of the Alps, as a Springbok 23 carrying around 1,000 caps started the second half of their Nations Championship campaign in Turin, but it’s fair to say nobody, not even the most diehard Bok fan, expected the climb to be this steep for the hosts.
Just after the half-hour South Africa had six tries, all converted, and a 45-0 lead, and in that first half Italy made no dominant carries and only one dominant tackle, and they didn’t touch the ball in open play in the Springbok 22 until Leonardo Marin got his hands on it in first-half added time, from a kick, whereupon Italy promptly knocked it on.
You rarely see a half of Test rugby like that. It was simple, calculated, flawless, elite, ice-cold Test rugby from a side that won every collision, found every gap and took every opportunity that presented itself, and frankly the rest of the tournament, and Italy in particular, may wish to petition World Rugby for a new blue card, allowing sympathy reinforcements for whoever happens to be facing the Springboks when they’re in this mood.
The second half was a different story, in fairness to Italy, 21-7 to the Boks but with a flurry of errors after the break, as six replacements came on in one go, Rassie Erasmus well aware that Paris is only six days away, and the Italian bench gave the Azzurri something to hold on to. Will South Africa be happy? In the final analysis, no. Erasmus wants that level of first-half perfection for 80 minutes, not 40, and today South Africa were brilliant for one half and a shadow of themselves in the second.
Those 40 minutes
The foundation was the collision. Every single Springbok carry gained two or three metres after contact, whilst every Italian carry went backwards, and by half-time the numbers were brutal: South Africa had carried 37 times for 252 metres to Italy’s 13 carries for 60. Stats like that are rare at this level, and with the Springboks owning 65 per cent of the ball and 60 per cent of the territory, Italy barely had a touch, and when they did, they went backwards a great deal faster than they ever managed to go forwards.
Defensively South Africa were peerless, holding their width, which meant Italy had no space outside and had to carry into contact. Once they did, the Springbok tacklers isolated the carrier before his support could get there, and whilst it didn’t produce a flood of breakdown steals, it produced spills, knock-ons and errors galore; in that first quarter Italy knocked on [seven] times and conceded six penalties, plus a yellow card for Muhamed Hasa for a deliberate knock-on. Penalties are bodies, and Italy were giving them away because they were losing every single moment of contact.
On the other side of the ball it was all about ruck speed. South Africa won all 36 of their rucks in the first half, and the ball came back so quickly that Italy could never get numbers back into the line once they’d committed bodies to the floor, which shows palpably how a side can be patient and ruthless at the same time. The Boks simply went through the phases until the gap appeared, patient, poised and ice-cold. Italy did well to stop the first lineout maul on 16 minutes, but Morne van den Berg flew over from the side of the next ruck, and Malcolm Marx went on to score twice from lineout drives, the second when the Azzurri were down to 14 men.
To be fair to Italy, they aren’t a bad side, and there were a couple of things to hold on to. Their scrum held at times, especially when Simone Ferrari was on, Paolo Odogwu defended well and they stopped that first maul, but their attack had no shape, the errors kept coming and their exit strategy was at times diabolical, handing the ball straight back to South Africa, largely because the Springbok line speed rushed Paolo Garbisi into error after error.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu and the all-court Boks
Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu‘s try inside the first ten minutes set the tone, a third-phase break that left Giacomo Nicotera and Alessandro Fusco for dead as he spotted a gap between the two defenders and lit the afterburners for a 40-metre run to the line, made entirely by his own vision and fleetness of foot. Watching it was like playing tennis against Novak Djokovic and, having won a set off him, hearing him announce he’s been playing left-handed all along. That’s how big the mismatch was. Then, from the restart after Marx’s first try, Feinberg-Mngomezulu kicked a 50:22 straight from his own exit, and Siya Kolisi went over from the lineout to wrap up the bonus point inside the first 25 minutes. He wasn’t flawless, knocking on twice either side of half-time, once on his own 22, but those were the first blemishes of a brilliant afternoon.
What stood out most was the decision-making, an all-court game in which the Boks picked the right option almost every time, built on patience, practice, belief and understanding. The practice was obvious on Italy’s contestable kicks, where South Africa tactically put two men on the kicking side of the Italian receiver, so that any ball tapped back fell straight into their arms, and by the hour mark they’d managed it six times; it was like taking sweets off a toddler. That doesn’t happen by accident, and Erasmus can now consider himself officially redundant, because his players are coaching themselves on the field, which is exactly what elite coaches want to see.
Van den Berg took the official player of the match award, and his kicking game is certainly the best of the Springbok options right now, especially when he’s lucky enough to have Ethan Hooker in his chasing pack. Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Hooker or Van den Berg, any of the three could have been player of the match. Hooker was outstanding; he popped up at 13, won the ball in the air and finished the ninth try late on after the Springbok scrum drove Italy back in a heap. Opposing centres will be glad he’s on the wing, because he’s massive, quick and has fabulous hands, with a cut-out pass that would make Ignacio Brex smile, and the numbers back it up: Hooker made 86 metres and six clean breaks, comfortably the most on the pitch.
A second-half redemption?
South Africa’s second innings was a stumbling affair by comparison, and the cricketers amongst the Springbok fans might suggest the Juventus pitch was starting to turn as the day wore on. The Boks made more errors in the first five minutes after the break, with knock-ons from Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Damian Willemse, than in the whole first half, and as the replacements came on en masse the edge came off the South African game.
Italy, to their credit, improved, and it was a bit of both, an Azzurri side finding some passion, some pride and something to play for, whilst South Africa eased off a little amid the changes from the bench. Early in the second half Ferrari’s scrum drove the Boks back into their own 22 and won a penalty, and if Ox Nche has one tighthead who matches him almost blow for blow and is prepared to go toe to toe with him, it’s Ferrari. Italy then missed touch from 15 metres, undoing all the great work of their pack, an absolute coach-killer.
Their first dominant carry didn’t come until Ross Vintcent managed one well into the second half, but debutant Samuele Locatelli and Marin followed, and soon after a dominant carry in midfield off a lineout drew the Springbok defence narrow and a training-ground switch put Federico Ruzza over in the corner. It’s key to understand that Italy needed to win a collision first, something they’d continually failed to do.
The bench made a big difference. Stephen Varney, Vintcent and Manuel Zuliani, who won a penalty on the floor, lifted the tempo, and Enoch Opoku-Gyamfi made Italy’s second dominant tackle, on Franco Mostert, around the 50-minute mark. Italy finished with six turnovers won to South Africa’s two, and Fusco, with five defenders beaten and a clean break, was their most dangerous runner, despite a poor kicking game by his standards.
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What now for Italy?
After a first half like that, Gonzalo Quesada’s best course is to forget the first 40 completely and focus on what he can take from the second. The lesson he can’t ignore, however, is about selection, because the replacements well and truly outplayed the men they replaced, with Vintcent, Zuliani and Varney all giving him compelling reasons to start them in Genoa, whilst of the starters only Ange Capuozzo and Ferrari can hold their heads up high, having done anything near a Test-match job. The half-backs need a rethink too, because a side that has the ball as rarely as Italy did simply can’t afford to keep kicking it away, and they have to get their exits and touch-finders right, which neither starter managed today.
Argentina will offer a very different test, and judging by Los Pumas’ lineout and set-piece misery in Dublin last night, Italy’s maul and Ferrari’s scrummaging could be genuine weapons to push the South Americans all the way.
For South Africa, Erasmus will be happiest that his squad came through the 80 minutes fit, but he’ll look for a big improvement in the second half, an area where South Africa have traditionally been very strong, not least this summer. They face France in Paris on Friday, one of the biggest grudge matches in Test rugby, before finishing the series against Ireland in Dublin on 21 November.
READ MORE: Italy v Springboks: Result, scorers, match stats, line-ups
Source: www.planetrugby.com
