Sir John Kirwan ‘had a laugh’ at Springboks tactics in their ‘worst and most frustrating performance’ in a long time
All Blacks legend Sir John Kirwan has praised the Springboks’ innovation in the victory over Italy, but believes it was one of the worst performances Rassie Erasmus’ men have produced in some time.
South Africa scored seven tries en route to their 45-0 thrashing of the Azzurri, the team Kirwan previously coached, with two of the scores engineered from their new open play lineout tactic.
The Boks clinched the comprehensive victory despite a red card to Jasper Wiese in the 20th minute of the match and even went down to 13 men at one stage when Wilco Louw was yellow carded.
Worst and most frustrating Springboks performance
Still, that was not enough to impress Kirwan, though. However, the former winger did enjoy the innovation, particularly the first ploy of the game to manufacture a scrum as Manie Libbok chipped the kick-off short to Andre Esterhuizen.
“I had a laugh at that because when I was coaching Italy, we did that kick-off against Ireland in about 2003 because we felt that we had a better scrum,” Kirwan remarked on The Rivals podcast with Springboks great Victor Matfield.
“And we got penalised straight away like South Africa.
“But I love the innovation, but we need to understand when we are flaunting with the laws rather than being innovative.
“I love Rassie’s innovation, I do think they are great… but we’ve spoken about the physical player changing and if we introduce some of these things, is it going to fundamentally change what we all stand for in the game?”
Zoning in on the performance of the Boks, Kirwan feels that there will be a lot that the likes of France and the All Blacks could take away, stating that it’s the worst he has seen the Springboks play in some time.
“I thought it was the worst and most frustrating performance I’ve seen from South Africa in a long time,” he stated.
“When you play Italy, sometimes they can be incredibly frustrating. I know they scored six or seven tries, I just didn’t feel that they got into the real rhythm of their game.
South Africa and France are the two teams that I feel have real big depth but a few of the guys on the weekend, I don’t feel they were up to the level of the older guys.
Matfield hits back
His comments seemed to have baffled Matfield, who pressed Kirwan to pinpoint the players he felt did not ‘stand up’ against the Azzurri.
I felt it was a much better performance than last week, going up playing good rugby and then getting a red card, then going to 13 men but still nilling them, and scoring 45 points,” he said.
“It’s always difficult being one man down because you could lose a centre who has to go into the forwards, then back in the backline. They did what they needed to do, the physicality was there, and the intent was much better than last week.
“I don’t think it was that bad of a performance considering they had 14 men for 60 minutes.”
