International Rugby is back for another year starting with The Rugby Championships where the Wallabies fly over to South Africa for their opening match showdown v the Springboks in Pretoria. Wallabies may have opened the scoring account first but it was the Boks who dominated the first half with a penalty goal + two tries on the board ahead of the break 17-5. Although Wallabies again might have the final say when it comes to the consolation TRY, but there’s nothing much to say, however, when the Springboks went on to score another two tries before they got away with an easy win in front of their home crowd. The final score at Loftus Versfeld Stadium is 43-12.
Thought it was a good first few minutes with the opening TRY upon Eddie Jones’s return as Wallabies Head Coach, but there’s still a lot of work to be done after a huge loss away from home when it comes to the result in Pretoria. The other positive though I can say is the debut of reserve No.10 off the bench in Carter Gordon. He has excellent playmaking skills when not only he benefited from his development at the Melbourne Rebels over the last 1-2 years, but also worked well with another ex-Rebel too in Marika Koroibete that led to his consolation TRY on debut. Now let’s go into the hard stuff and sadly a mix of both a poor defense & discipline really gave plenty of opportunities from the Boks to get the job done with the mouth wide open before it was such a tall order to answer as this game progresses for most of the time. They might have an easy game coming up on Saturday v the Pumas in Parramatta but they also can’t keep letting these mistakes happen going into the end of this month v the All Blacks – one at MCG followed by another a week later over in Dunedin for the Bledisloe Cup.
Congratulations to the Springboks with an excellent start to the Rugby Championship on home soil. Gotta admire the way they structure their attack every time they got the ball on hand including off the back of some winning penalties. That way, they can get their numbers organised in order to keep that flow going without being interrupted by the opposition half. They were able to get the job done fair & square thanks to their speedy left-winger Kurt-Lee Ardense with his hat-trick haul as well as Pieter Steph Du-Toit later in the 75th minute. Having summed up a comfortable win v the Wallabies, they’re now heading off to Mt Start Stadium in Auckland on Saturday as the Boks are looking to win v All Blacks on their turf. If they can get away against that possession patient side, then the Rugby Championship is almost theirs as long as they can beat the Pumas at the end of this month. And who knows, this could be a great springboard towards defending another Rugby World Cup crown in France this September-October.
