McFarland says Boks aren’t satisfied
Springbok defence coach John McFarland says that the team showed their true character in the come-from-behind win over Wales this past weekend, but insists they have plenty of room for improvement.
South Africa edged the Welsh Dragons 31-30 in Nelspruit on Saturday and will be looking to up their game ahead of the one-off Test against Scotland in Port Elizabeth this coming weekend.
“I think we’ve been good for our last six Tests, and in those tests we’ve only conceded six tries. Obviously Saturday was not ideal, but Welsh coach Warren Gatland did admit to Heyneke that in the first Test we caught them with our intensity,” McFarland said.
“They were far more intent and had a lot more sting in their collisions on the weekend and we struggled for that middle few minutes to cope with it in the first half. If you look at the last 50 minutes, when we were down to 14, I thought it was a heroic defensive performance. The true colours came through in the last 50 minutes.”
“It is always the aim to stop them, but they just caught us in the opening half. To me though, the way the guys bounced back in the last 50 minutes, it was great character. Our work rate was high.
“If you look at the last passage of play, we made around 30 tackles in the space of two minutes and got a lot of pressure on the drop goal. That showed great intent to win the game. The guys are excited that we are able to win a match in so many ways at the moment.”
Despite praising the defensive performance, McFarland was adamant that the Boks aren’t satisfied.
“We’re still looking at the performance and execution at what we want to do in terms of our game plan. When they scored two tries before halftime, and it showed when we scored the two tries with the yellow card – to score the long range try where we went the whole length of the field was really great,” McFarland explained.
“They were just more intent and more dominant in those first 20 minutes, and then we got up the last 50. It is a measure of a team that they can come back under that sort of pressure and strain and play good rugby. At the end of the day we came through and won the game in the 78th minute.
“For us the guys are excited they came back to win the game. There is obviously great relief in the team that we could do it, and in the way we did. We were 13 points down in the 70th minute and we scored the two tries in the way we did. The turning point was the scrum when we drove them back and stole the ball in the tackle and ended up in their half.”
