Victor Matfield: I’m not worried about the Springboks; we dominated the All Blacks
Victor Matfield is confident that the Springboks will bounce back from their defeat to the All Blacks after 'dominating' several facets of the game.
Legendary Springboks lock Victor Matfield is not ‘worried’ about South Africa losing the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series opener to the All Blacks.
Rassie Erasmus’ men fell to a 33-16 defeat at Ellis Park in the first game of the Test series, with New Zealand outscoring the hosts five tries to one.
That result not only puts Dave Rennie’s men up 1-0 in the four-Test series, but has also seen the All Blacks return to the summit of the World Rugby rankings for the first time in a year. New Zealand also snapped South Africa’s 12-game winning streak with their victory.
Victor Matfield: We dominated the All Blacks
Despite the defeat, former Bok captain Matfield is not overly concerned, as he believes international rugby is far more competitive now than in the past, predicting no team will dominate in the same way the All Blacks did in the 2010s.
“I don’t think you’ll ever get a nation to dominate the game for three or four years as New Zealand have done in the past,” he said on SuperSport’s Final Whistle Presents Side Entry show.
“Teams are too close to each other; anything can happen on the day. You don’t use one or two opportunities, and all of a sudden you’re in trouble.
“If we think back one year ago, we sat here after we lost to Australia, and we were asking, is it the end of an era? Where are we standing? And again, it was a game that we started well, same as this year, made one or two mistakes. Unfortunately, we couldn’t turn it around.”
While the scoreline points to a comprehensive defeat, the former second-rower suggests that it flatters the victors and claims that the Springboks actually dominated the All Blacks but just failed to make the most of their chances.
“I’m not worried”
This left him quite confident that New Zealand couldn’t back up that performance over the next three Test matches, particularly with South Africa ‘dominating’ several facets of the game.
“If I look at this game, I’m not as worried as everyone else. We dominated the scrums; in the second half, we dominated the lineout. We actually looked better on attack between the 22 metre lines,” he continued.
“Our defence: they never threw anything at us from set-pieces from far out and made us think that they were going to put us wide-wide – that never happened.
“It was all about: we had our opportunities in the first half; there were three opportunities we didn’t score. They were really good when they got to the 22; we have to give that to them. Cam Roigard is unbelievable, so they do have special players that can play the big moments, but if you look at the game, I still think we dominated them.
“There was no time in the game where I felt this was a team that’s going to beat us two or three times in a row.”
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Pressure on the Springboks
Drawing on his personal experience from his playing days, Matfield said that it was just one of those days for the Boks when you simply don’t capitalise.
He added that the pivotal scrum penalty that the All Blacks won inside their own 22 was the turning point in the game. Fabian Holland scored a try soon after and that shifted all the pressure onto the Springboks, according to the 2007 World Cup winner.
“It was all we expected; the physicality was there. We all waited for that first scrum; we got the dominance. I thought we got the dominance in that first half. Everything was there,” he said, reflecting on the game as a whole.
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“At half-time, for the first time, I was worried because sometimes you go into a game like that, and you don’t use your opportunities. We’ve had it in a Currie Cup final against the Cheetahs, the Bulls team, and we hadn’t lost a game. We were over the try line four times, didn’t score.
“Then at half-time, one or two things happen. Either the dam wall breaks and you get through, and you run away with them… They dominated the All Blacks for the next 15 minutes, but they couldn’t get that score, and when New Zealand did, what happened? All the pressure came on to South Africa.
“You could just see when that pressure came… They got the turnover scrum, went to the other side, and New Zealand scored. Then you could just see the pressure on the players, and that’s natural.”
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