De Villiers unfazed by bonus point

Editor

South Africa captain Jean de Villiers insisted the lack of a try bonus point was not essential following the 28-8 win over Australia.

South Africa captain Jean de Villiers insisted the lack of a try bonus point was not essential following the 28-8 win over Australia.

The Springboks ran in three tries through Adriaan Strauss, Zane Kirchner and Willie Le Roux but were unable to notch up an elusive fourth score despite dominating for long period of the match.

De Villiers underlined that South Africa were in with a chance of winning The Rugby Championship next weekend, which was the most important outcome from the match.

“I've been asked in this room so many times about bonus points and all of that when you're top of the log [with the Stormers],” said De Villiers.

“We're in the running to win this competition and the team has progressed so much from last year – playing good rugby and making opportunities but today we didn't capitalise on that. We beat Australia by 20 points and I think we need to be happy about that.

“We wanted to win the game first and build a comfortable lead before attacking more. We got to that point and had 40 minutes to score two tries, but unfortunately we couldn't. We created opportunities but the challenge was not the scoreboard, but the way that we played.

“We're still not happy with areas of our game, but we beat Australia by 20 points. If you'd given us that at the start of the year we'd have probably taken it. We've won four of five games in The Rugby Championship and now it comes down to one more that we'd like to win as well.”

South Africa coach Heyneke Meyer turned the lack of a bonus point into a positive as he highlighted how far his team had come since he took charge.

“It's a great sign when you pick up a record win at Newlands against a quality side and you win, but you're not that happy,” said Meyer.

“I was worried about this game. We could have easily looked past it to [New Zealand] and the Wallabies are a quality side. We usually don't score a lot of tries at Newlands against Australia, so I'm happy with the performance.

“Obviously we didn't get the bonus point, but I think the great thing is that we're in with a chance next weekend at Ellis Park.”

Meyer did express his dissatisfaction with his side's two yellow cards, with Flip Van Der Merwe and Duane Vermeulen sin-binned for needless discrepancies.

“There were a lot of 50/50 decisions but in the end the referee is always right,” added Meyer.

“We didn't get the momentum going and we'll have to have a look at that because I'm not happy about it.”

by Ben Coles
@bencoles_