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“Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” could not be a more apt description of South Africa’s performance against the Wallabies on Saturday night.
They’ll be gutted by the loss but equally should be quietly confident they can turn things around should the two teams meet again in the quarter-final stage at Twickenham, particularly as they’ll be reinforced by Jean De Villiers and Duane Vermeulen.
The Wallabies must find a way to beat England and Wales to avoid that path to the World Cup final as it’s highly unlikely we’ll get there with a full strength Springboks and All Blacks in the way.
In the complete reverse of South Africa’s fortunes, the Wallabies certainly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in a game that will go down as one of the best this generation has produced, not in terms of physicality, skill or execution, but in terms of the character they showed to keep fighting until the very end.
Cheika has brought back something us fans have missed for a long time: pride in the jersey.
That aside, I think Cheika’s selections made this game a lot harder than it needed to be and I’d go further by saying Roarers should give ourselves a collective pat on the back – our team was on the money.
Of course, there’s no way to prove that definitively, but the game did play out largely as predicted with Cheika’s selections: we struggled at the breakdown and lacked pace out wide.
These two deficiencies were largely covered in the Roar team with David Pocock starting ahead of Michael Hooper and Drew Mitchell and Joe Tomane ahead of Adam Ashley-Cooper and Rob Horne. That’s not to say that any of the latter players played poorly – Hooper in fact had a very good game – however compared to The Roar candidates, these players didn’t give us the breakdown presence or pace we needed to play to our full potential.
Hooper and Scott Higginbotham should never have been picked in the same backrow as neither is particularly good at pilfering or clearing out rucks so we were always going to get exposed at the breakdown.
And so it transpired that we were comprehensively dominated at the breakdown until Pocock got on the field.
Out wide it’s a little harder to judge whether The Roar selections would have made a difference. Ashley-Cooper scored a good try and Horne did well with his limited opportunities, but overall Australia made twice as many clean breaks as South Africa and without a genuine speedster to finish off, we just seemed to get chased down too easily.
This is by no means intended to suggest The Roar should collectively have a say in Wallaby selection, but on this occasion I think we got it right.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.