Recovery, reflection and renewal will be on the minds of the All Blacks as they arrive home from their Lipovitan D Rugby Championship Tests against South Africa for a few days off before getting back together to prepare to play Australia.
It was another case of missed opportunities in Saturday’s 12-18 loss in the second Test.
No 8 Ardie Savea said that while his body was sore after the game, he was more disappointed with the result.
“We gave ourselves opportunities to close that out and finish it. It’s a testament to the Springboks and what they can do.”
Searching for reasons why chances were not being taken, he said it was probably down to individual skillsets, including his own.
“It starts with us and individual discipline. We’re getting in the right areas of the field and giving the Springboks penalties, and they are getting down to our part of the field and punishing us.
“We had many opportunities, and South Africa scrambled well out wide. There were times in the game when we got down to the right areas of the park, but we either lost the ball at the breakdown or gave away a penalty.
“You can’t do that to a Springbok side, they feed off that. They’ll punish us. They came down to our end of the field and scored points. We made it hard for ourselves.”
Savea said South Africa understood how they wanted to play and had the players who knew how to operate and manage the game.
“We need to look at ourselves and try and rectify that because it’s two weeks now we haven’t finished things off.”
Savea acknowledged loose forward Wallace Sititi’s starting debut in such an atmosphere.
“Wally was awesome tonight, very dangerous with the ball in hand. For a young fellow, he walks around like he’s a veteran, and he acts like a veteran. I’m very proud of Wally and I’m sure there’s many more Tests to come from him.”
Fullback Will Jordan said the Test was a step up in physicality from the first Test a week earlier, and they had done well in matching that. Towards the end of the first half, they were winning collisions.
He said it felt like it got scrappy toward the end of the game.
“They did a good job of putting the ball up in the air and winning scraps off it, and we probably struggled to find shape a little bit. We had our chances, they won a few breakdowns and got into our 22 and were hard to stop from there.
“We’re going to have to find a way to get the tempo of the game up, find space and be clinical. We had some chances in their 22 and didn’t quite nail it.”
Jordan said losing the two Tests was a little weird. They knew it was always a battle playing South Africa but they felt they played a lot of good rugby, put the Springboks under pressure at times but unfortunately couldn’t get the results.
“There are plenty of positives in our game, but we’ll have to find a way to win those small margins. We tried to make some adjustments this week but still didn’t get it quite right.
“We’ll take positives from how we’re starting games and putting teams under pressure but we’ve got to find a solution to come out on top.”