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Sam Bruce, Deputy Editor, espn.com.au
In the eighth minute of Saturday night’s Rugby Championship opener, Marika Koroibete completed a slick Wallabies sequence for a try in the left-hand corner. For the 72 minutes that followed, Australia could not muster a solitary threatening attack as they succumbed to an unrelenting green wave that immediately quashed the warm fuzzy glow of Eddie Jones’ return.
The Springboks, simply, were unstoppable at Loftus Versfeld as they ran in six tries, two of which were penalty tries, and completely sucked the air out of the Wallabies to extend their prefect record against Australia in Pretoria to 8-0.
It finished 43-12, and that scoreboard could have easily read even uglier for the Wallabies as the hosts were held up over the line on another occasion and had a further try called back, correctly, for a knock-on in the tackle.
South Africa’s work at the collision was far superior to Australia’s throughout the 80 minutes, that momentum allowing the hosts to squeeze the Wallabies on both territory and possession, and asked them to complete a mountain of defensive work in the process, which in turn brought about a whopping 13-3 penalty count against Australia, and left the visitors with no energy to attack on the fleeting occasions they did actually touch the ball.
“There was an opportunity to come here and put in a game that we were proud of, and to be fair we just defended the whole second half,” Wallabies co-captain James Slipper said. “You’ve got to give credit to the Springboks, they put us under pressure – we’ll learn a lot from that.
“Once again discipline, playing at the right end of the field [wasn’t good enough]; it’s a tough start but we’ve got a long year ahead of us, there’s plenty to come, so we’ll keep working hard.
“We wanted to play a Wallaby game tonight, and I’d probably say we didn’t deal with the pressure, discipline put us on the back foot a bit. We lost two players to the sin-bin; in Test matches you need to be playing well in those areas, set-piece needs to be functioning, you need to be playing at the right end of the field and we just didn’t do that tonight.”
The rot set in almost immediately after Koroibete’s try as Wallabies scrum-half Nic White was held up from the restart, after which Springboks fly-half Manie Libbok, who was outstanding behind a dominant pack, soon had the hosts’ points tally ticking over with a penalty.
By the time final siren sounded, the Springboks had piled on 43 unanswered points to make the perfect start to their Rugby Championship campaign and send a message to their top Test rivals ahead of the World Cup.
A long-range Wallabies effort started and finished by Carter Gordon after that was Australia’s only other entry into the Springboks’ 22.
It was certainly a night to remember for Springboks winger Kurt-Lee Arendse, who scored a hat-trick with two clever finishes after his first five-pointer was as easy as they come. The finish for his third was the pick of the bunch, Arendse stepping back inside the Wallabies’ Fijian wingers Koroibete and Vunivalu to score despite a small question mark about the legitimacy of Lukhanyo Am’s final pass.
But this Springboks win was built on the power of their pack through the middle of the park, where they crashed into and through Australia’s defensive line and then swatted the Wallabies aside at the tackle. One of their penalty tries came via a rolling maul which marched Australia back on several occasions, while Libbok steered the ship around superbly knowing that time and space was always on his side.
A supposedly understrength Springboks side – or at least one down multiple first-choice players – was still far too good for the Wallabies in every facet of the match; the back-row of Pieter-Steph du Toit, Duane Vermeulen and Marco van Staden combining for 99 metres on 30 runs, those numbers illustrating perfectly the scale of the physical and defensive challenge the Wallabies were asked to confront.
“We had our plans going into the game and we didn’t know what to expect from Australia, we always know Eddie might have one or two things up his sleeve,” Springboks captain Duane Vermeulen said. “But I think we adapted well, we played to our strengths and yeah [we’re] really happy with the performance.
“That [set-piece, defence, kicking game], will always be there, that is in our blood, that’s the way we play, we can still improve, it’s still not 100% our best performance, but like I said we’re really happy with the performance.”
And it was a feeble riposte from Australia at best.
The altitude also appeared to rattle the Wallabies, with Australia scrambling to keep the score to only 17-5 at the break; the visitors had made 64 tackles to their hosts’ 33 to halftime. Given that defensive workload, any thought of a second-half comeback always appeared fanciful. And so it proved as the Wallabies were forced to make another 82 tackles in the second half.
It was hard to find a Wallabies player who actually stood up under the continued pressure, though both Koroibete and Rob Valetini never stopped trying and came away with their reputations intact. There were also sparing moments of individual skill, such as Michael Hooper’s first-half turnover and Gordon’s smart late kick and support play.
What to make of Jones’ imprint on this Wallabies group to date, then?
Not much, in short. And you might just wonder what sacked coach Dave Rennie was thinking when he sat back and watched the Rugby Championship opener. If, indeed, he will have watched it at all.
Jones has made a point of describing his nine-month runway to the World Cup as a “smash and grab” mission, but on Saturday night the Wallabies were smashed and the only thing Australia’s players will have grabbed post-match will be ice and oxygen after they were beaten up and had the wind well and truly sucked out of them.
Fortunately, they have an opportunity to make an immediate response next week in Sydney, where altitude won’t be a factor and Argentina will also be dealing with the travel factor and a reduced preparation.
But on the evidence of Saturday night’s 43-12 drubbing, and recent Tests games against the Pumas, that Test will also be anything but a snack — particularly given Australia’s inability to land anything resembling a physical blow on the Springboks, so too the South Americans’ love for that part of the contest.
And so Jones’ second coming as Wallabies coach is off to an awful start, and that infectious positivity that has surrounded his return in Australia completely obliterated by a green wave that will not only fancy its chances of rumbling through the All Blacks next week, but more importantly in France in two months’ time.
The man once known as “Eddie Everywhere”, meanwhile, has work to do everywhere in his second Wallabies stint.