South Africa head for England and Twickenham next Saturday losers of the first game of their autumn tour and hardly looking like the side many fancy for the World Cup in 11 months’ time after being left utterly confused by Irish passion and the clinical boot of Jonny Sexton.
After the scrappiest of first halves, and an early Irish try 90 seconds into the second, the Springboks finally woke up after 56 minutes, their physical forwards taking control to drive flanker Marcell Coetzee over from a lineout.
The conversion pulled the Irish lead back to three points, but until then it had been a trio of unlikely heroes who had taken the game by the scruff. Jared Payne and Robbie Henshaw, starting in the centre for the first time in the absence of Brian O’Driscoll (retired) and Gordon D’Arcy, still unfit after a calf injury, manufactured the pressure that South Africa’s full-back Willie le Roux could not handle, then Rhys Ruddock, a last-minute replacement burst over.
However, the knockout blow came eight minutes from time when Tommy Bowe, back in the Test arena for the first time since last season’s championship-winning Six Nations, was first to a clever box kick from the scrum-half Conor Murray.
Ireland could easily have looked what they were, a side who had not played together since June, whereas South Africa had beaten Australia, Wales, Argentina, Scotland and the team ranked No1 in the world, New Zealand, since then. That victory over the All Blacks was just over a month ago, but their coach, Heyneke Meyer, has pulled so many strings that his players have been in camp virtually non-stop since August while Joe Schmidt has had to do his best with 26 days. It should have showed.
Instead Ireland scrapped for everything. The hooker Sean Cronin was everywhere until the legs went, while the back row did what they do best at every breakdown. With Cian Healy and Rory Best missing up front and Chris Henry, the Ulster open-side, pulling out before kick-off with a virus, things could have been particularly difficult at the set piece, but the scrum just about survived under massive pressure and the normally peerless Springbok lineout was occasionally guilty of shooting itself in the foot.
This time last year the Irish scared the daylights out of the All Blacks, but even when Meyer turned to the insurance of a replacements’ bench that boasted 316 caps between them, Ireland kept their noses ahead. Two second-half Sexton penalties extended the three-point lead and then Bowe delivered the knockout to a side already down to 14 men with the replacement hooker Adriaan Strauss in the sin-bin.
Eleven months and eight games out from the next World Cup it was not a convincing performance by a side so fancied by the bookies. Not even a try by the replacement wing JP Pietersen could add any gloss.
“What we didn’t do well was hang on to the ball and that’s grade rugby,” said their captain Jean de Villiers. “You would think we could hang on to the ball for more than two phases. It’s a step back. That was well below the standard we have set ourselves. We’ll be hard on ourselves for the next couple of days then start focusing on that next game.”
Not that the opening was without a few jangling nerves as Sexton first landed high balls on the wing Bryan Habana and then Le Roux. The fly-half also made sure Henshaw got into the game early, the Connacht man launched like a battering ram, before the boot was back in play, sliding the ball into the path of Bowe.
It was an adventurous 10 minutes when Paul O’Connell was even confident enough in his own scrum to turn down a free-kick and it earned the first points of the night when Jannie du Plessis crumbled.
In the past South Africa might have responded with the juggernaut pack. Instead Dublin became the first ground in the northern hemisphere to see what the new boy Handré Pollard has added to the Springboks, the fly-half twice opening things up before Sexton was back centre-stage with an old-fashioned foot rush to relieve the pressure that the South Africa backs had been building.
Rob Kearney also had his say, breaking through a thicket of Springbok shirts to set up the penalty – Jan Serfontein punished for not releasing – that Sexton landed from wide out to push the score to 6-0.
It was all very uplifting for the sell-out crowd, but after 25 minutes the Springbok pack got serious for the first time, winning a scrum penalty then driving the resultant lineout before a fumble let them down. A second scrum was also an Irish mess, but again the Boks let themselves down and the Aviva let out a cheer of relief.
Another followed when midfield passes started going astray and another when Victor Matfield won perfectly good lineout ball, only to see it lost under of sea of scrapping bodies. Would Irish luck and Springbok philanthropy last? Well, two minutes before half-time Pollard finally decided to accept a penalty shot, but the first 40 ended much as it started, with South Africa fumbling the final play.
In fact they were made to pay only 90 seconds after the restart, Le Roux failing to deal with Henshaw’s kick and Payne’s rush.
Ireland dominated the resulting lineout, Devin Toner rising above everyone else and when the drive was put on, Rhys Ruddock, son of the former Wales coach Mike Ruddock, burst through. Sexton’s conversion made it 13-3 and Springbok backs were to the wall.
