The internal review into what exactly went wrong for South Africa at Newlands last weekend is already underway and reports suggest that it’s proving to be a tough lesson for new coach Allister Coetzee – though he claims Ireland’s tactics killed the game as a contest.
Coetzee, the former Stormers coach, accused his side of being too tame throughout the 26-20 defeat and said that his players are “embarrassed” at their performance and suggested that there will be a much-improved performance for next weekend’s second test.
The South African coach was also critical of Ireland, however, stating that Joe Schmidt’s side were more concerned with making life difficult for the South Africans than playing their own brand of rugby.
They weren’t interested in playing. All they did was make it difficult as possible for us to exit, just put it in behind us, turn us and we were actually bogged down in our own 22 there. They got a drop goal and a chip try and it was a very clever tactic and I don’t think we handled it well but I think we will be better this week.
While Coetzee is clearly trying to deflect as much blame from his own set of players as possible, he reserved a measure of compliments for the Irish efforts.
All credit to the Irish, they really scrambled and they worked exceptionally hard when they were one guy short. But still, we allowed it to look really good.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are curious as to what the second test will look like when it’s 15 v 15…
