The main stats that tell you why Boks are champs

Springboks © Getty Images

The main stats that tell you why Boks are champs

Gavin Rich

Sun 08 Aug, 07:47

As the dust settled on South Africa’s dramatic last gasp win over the British and Irish Lions, there was a stat that flashed up on the television screens in the press suites at Cape Town Stadium that for any other team would seem rather remarkable.

It was the one that reflected that the Springboks had managed only 36 per cent of the available possession in the game which they eventually won with a Morne Steyn penalty one minute from time to clinch the series 2-1.

“Not many teams would expect to win with so little possession,” remarked one scribe.

“The Boks often do,” responded another.

And it’s true. Think back to Wellington in 2018, the game that played such a significant role in giving the Boks confidence to strike out for World Cup glory in Japan the following year. The Bok team that won at Wespac Stadium that day was soundly beaten in the battle for possession by the All Blacks.

There was a more recent example though. When South Africa A, which was the Boks in all but name, beat the Lions in a midweek game 10 days before the official start of the series, they were as soundly beaten in the battle for possession as they were in the final test nearly a month later. Yet they won that game too, and scored two tries to one.

DANGEROUS COUNTER-ATTACKERS

That try count is also something to note and consider if you are one of those who are inclined to think that the Boks’ defensive prowess makes them boring.

In Wellington in 2018, the Boks won the game on their defence yet also scored five tries. As they showed then and again in the SA A game and also in the deciding Lions test, they are not just good defenders, they are also superb counter-attackers and dangerous from broken play.

There is a further stat that bears consideration and which completely refutes those who contend the Boks should play differently and that it is the Lions who played all the rugby and the Boks just, as they used to say of Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho, parked the bus.

While the Boks’ big achievement was to restrict the Lions to two tries across three test matches, with both of those Lions scores coming via driving mauls, thus reflecting that the so-called Lions threats at the back were completely negated, they scored four tries across the three matches. Not only that, but they were also across the line for disallowed tries far more often than the Lions were across those three matches.

The Willie le Roux try in the first test was only disallowed by a marginal call. The try the Boks did score in that test was an excellent counter-attacking try, started by Pieter-Steph du Toit outflanking some of the Lions in his own half and Faf de Klerk dotting down. The 80-metre counter-attack try scored by the Boks and so brilliantly finished by Cheslin Kolbe in the final test was also a spectacular score.

DOESN”T FIT THE BORING NARRATIVE

And because it was still really Boks against Lions, let’s factor that SA A game into the mix. That leaves us with eight tries across four matches, with the Boks scoring five against three. All the Lions tries were scored by their forward drive, they never had a back cross the line against the Boks once. All the Bok tries were scored by backs.

That’s a quite incredible statistic and doesn’t quite fit the boring narrative. When it has been on to attack, the Boks have done so, and even in the first half of the final test, when they were forced to make four times as many tackles as their opponents, they came close to scoring with a cross field sweep that Handre Pollard started inside his own 22.

There is some validity to the argument that the Lions might have done better had they opened up more and perhaps played someone like Finn Russell ahead of Dan Biggar, but it was when they turned to their kicking game that the Lions produced their most successful half of the series in terms of points scoring. They won the second half of the first test 19-5.

And as the All Blacks learned in Wellington, playing an all-embracing running game against the Boks doesn’t necessarily work. Even if you have the best players in the business playing for you, which the Kiwis are at the back in comparison to the Lions, there is no team in world rugby more adept at exploiting opposition mistakes.

KEY PLAYERS WERE ABSENT AND THEY STILL WON

The Boks weren’t great in the final test and towards the end there were times they looked determined to lose as they made mistakes, such as Herschel Jantjies taking way too long to play the ball and the Lions ending up with a penalty that they kicked for three points when it had in fact been the Boks who were driving forward.

While veteran Steyn was the eventual hero for his winning kick, he also did some odd things, like almost failing to dot down behind the tryline on one occasion and also missing touch.

But the Bok mission needs to be seen in perspective - they were playing the Lions, who are always recognised as a step above when it comes to challenges (outside of the All Blacks of course) after not having played for 20 months, and any kind of win was going to be seen as a mighty achievement.

What makes it even more noteworthy were the disruptions to their final series preparations caused by the Covid outbreak and the fact that for the entire series, they were without the massively influential Duane Vermeulen while 2019 World Rugby Player of the Year Pieter-Steph du Toit played less than half the series. Both were missing from the last test.

RG Snyman, such an important part of the Bomb Squad at the World Cup, was another player the Boks had to do without while Lood de Jager, so brilliant as a replacement in the second test, came into the series underdone after a long injury absence.

In a nutshell, the Boks could have been a lot better and had several reasons to not be quite at the top of their game, and yet they still won a series against a good Lions team. That’s an achievement that deserves resounding applause.

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