Handre Pollard and Wilco Louw offered the biggest positives in Cape Town, yet the Springboks looked a side far from the composed champions of 2023, writes MARK KEOHANE.

Writing for TimesLIVE, Keohane says Pollard’s perfection off the kicking tee and Louw’s late scrum dominance could not disguise another disjointed Springboks performance, one that relied heavily on Australian errors.

“Louw is the strongest scrumming tighthead in the game, and he should have been on a minute into the second half,” Keohane notes, highlighting how the Bok pack lacked control until his introduction in the 62nd minute.

He adds that the Boks “played like a team that has not had two successive outings this season” due to Rassie Erasmus averaging 12 changes to the matchday 23 and 10 to his starting XV across six Tests. The rotation, Keohane argues, may be justified for 2027, but in the present “this approach was a missed Australian kick away from back-to-back defeats.”

Rassie: Ground-out win better than pretty loss

The Wallabies exposed a passive Bok defence and punished lineout woes, while Eben Etzebeth’s botched final pass summed up a night where “relief is the emotion at the final whistle, and frustration.”

“Boks order was restored, with the win, but it was unconvincing, and it was more sterile than outstanding,” Keohane writes. The looming Eden Park clash against the All Blacks, he concludes, now inspires “as much trepidation as it does anticipation.”

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