SPRINGBOKS VS ENGLAND | POST MATCH REACTION

All right, we wanted to do a live but my new location didn't allow for that, I didn't plan and of course technical premium is creeping in. So Paul, I've decided to record it. The reason we're talking to you is because of exactly this, where you are, you're at the game. So talk us through it. And yes, the game has ended.

There's still a lot of people in the boxers walking around the field. It was really, really... The crowd was bigger than we thought. The atmosphere was awesome. Perfect weather for rugby.

Not too cold, just perfect. And I'd say the game, except for 10 minutes at the end of the first half, kind of a really excellent performance from the box that dominated, played really well. I can't point to any player that didn't play well. At the end of the first half, I was really nervous. There was just a subtle swing in momentum.

And suddenly there was three points in the game. But then in the second half, the box came out, went more direct, played the physical game. and in the last few minutes, the last 10 minutes, we finally got scrum dominance as well. And so we ended on a canter and I think it was a thoroughly deserved and very comfortable win for the box. Well, talk me through it because we heard just before the game started that Sia Kulisi and Eben Ezebeth, both of them, strangely enough, not available.

I mean, some people would raise an eyebrow at that. at the same time, England losing the service of George Furbank, their fullback with appendicitis has actually been operated on this morning. Do you suspect there was a bit of synagogues going on here? Do you think it was an honest injury or was it maybe some Rusty mind games? I know it's easy to speculate, but I was just interested in your opinion.

Yeah, you know, I can't be sure, but I would not put it past Rusty that there were some mind games here, especially with how late the announcement came of the changes and it was a quite pretty big change in the setup because of those two injuries uh because we had peter steph going to lock uh we had cameron hanakom getting a start these first starts at the spring box going into peter steph's position and then paul the vet going uh onto the other side for and ben jason dixon so it was quite a big change and made me a little bit nervous before the start uh but i think it worked out okay for the most part yeah the interesting thing for me was um england had three locks i mean that also chasm olichesum at six so they're three locks and it seems to me that they sort of you know maybe got the upper hand a bit physically compared to uh paul de valeurs and kavanagh who seemed to be struggling a little bit to subdue them and then after the half time we saw ben jason coming on going to lock and Peter Steff moving to seven again and things seem to have stabilized a bit even with Marco at six there. Paul De Valle has played his heart out I'm sure. I see a lot of comments about the amount of work that he put in but the referee also not very let's call it amenable to his pilfering. What were your impressions there? Yeah, I would say yes, it seems that in total you're only allowed to have four locks on the field.

So England had three and we only had one lock on the field and And despite that, let me first of all say our line-out functioned pretty well throughout the game. And I think Ruan Narkea just did like a mammoth job again, like he always does. But I do agree with you. I feel like Cameron, like I'm a huge fan of Cameron, but I feel like he got a little bit of getting used to the new position that he was playing on the blind side And I do think we lacked a little bit of a muscle man there But I still think both him and Paul De Villiers had really great games I thought Paul De Villiers was very involved in the game. I'm not sure actually what he needed to do with this ref to get like a jackal awarded to him.

But I thought he had a great debut. if you think that unless there were real Rossi shenanigans, he most likely didn't know until late last night or early this morning that he was going to play and start it. But I do think it showed a little bit. And I think even though it worked out okay tonight, I don't think it's a setup that Rossi wants to have going forward that way. But it does prove our versatility and our depth.

Talk to me about quickly, you met both Cameron and Aldrich Loosdad at Alice Park, both of them we've had on our show before. What were your impressions meeting them in person? I see you claiming, your claim to fame was that you were supposedly Rossi, but nobody bought that. Nobody bought that or bought that. Yeah, I would say that was super cool.

Like, I'd known that Cameron's dad would be here, and you know, This was his second test, Oni. He played one test back a while ago in Wales, and then he got injured. So this was his second test back, and when I spoke to his dad, his dad knew that he was going to start. And it was just really like a special, and his whole family is here, his brothers, was really, really cool. And then maybe 20 minutes later, Alrys Lowe's dad showed up.

He wasn't planning to come to the game, but at the last minute came. And so it was really cool to meet both of them and hang out with them for a little bit. and to see Cameron's dad watch his son come down the tunnel and run onto the field and sing the anthem. It was just special. Yeah.

Talk to me about the fact that they moved Peter Steff to four and brought two fairly light, let's call them light, flankers onto the field. Why not get a proper four like Peter Steff, Kürbis Wieser, for example, to replace Eben? I'm thinking about that kind of thing because definitely I think the box were, you know, they were the better team, but especially in that first half, like you said, towards the second part of the first half. They were a little bit on the back foot physically. England scoring those two tries late in the second half and it seemed to be like they got a bit of dominance there.

Rossi probably saw that coming but I'm interested why they wouldn't bring a player like Oberswissar into the team rather. A proper fall rather than let's call it not inexperienced, unusual. Peter Steff obviously started as a lock but he hasn't played lock that often and losing weight on the sides on the flanks. I agree with you. I would say though, Peter Staff is just like Mr.

Reliable. He was rock solid. He made some really hard tackles and everything. But I agree with you, Envy, and I don't know. One of my guesses is that certain players practiced more in the structure before this game and Russi stuck with them because you could also have considered bringing alrich lo uh in uh and i think it's just because alrich joined the team later and maybe hasn't had enough time to kind of work in the structure paul devette has been there for two weeks uh already so that's my only guess or it could be that russie intended to just play a much faster game by having all the new forwards on to play a lot faster game in the first half they really tried, they moved the ball really fast, they were doing quick rucks, and it was working for the first 25 minutes.

And then they lost a little bit of momentum and then in that last two and ten minutes when England scored it was suddenly really nervous I had feelings of the australia game where it felt like we should be up like 30 to zero and that we were we were dominating and suddenly we're just three points up and we go into the half and the momentum had clearly the body language of the english they were a little bit shell-shocked in that first 15 minutes but their body language was different going into the half but i feel like russi and the team came out with the perfect plan for the second half. They went more direct. Jasper Wiesel was making some strong runs through the middle. And so they were going through the middle over and over and then going wide. And it just changed the dynamics and it didn't look after that, that the English would get back into the game.

Just quickly, Marnie, I mean, lots of talk about Marnie, but you know, he just stood up and performed like we expected him to. Your thoughts on him? I thought he had an excellent game. Not to kick into the polls, though. I mean, that now looks to be Jesslyn Colby's job going forward.

Didn't do too badly, but still. Barney, no pressure of kicking. Just be yourself. And I think it paid off. He had a good game.

I really think he has a good game. And I think he ultimately is our best distributing 10. And he looked really comfortable. His kicks were pretty good. He moves the ball really well.

He has really fast, sharp, and long passes and so look i would say there are two things that you should uh because one i was sitting five rows from the field actually an excellent position as a fan but sometimes hard to see like the whole field and how the plays were developing and then the second one is i'm always my heartbeat during a game like this is 160 beats a minute so i couldn't but i thought mani had a really good game i thought damian williamson had a really awesome game like he was so solid uh on defense he was solid under the high ball and then i have to think that the the wings especially must have been practicing for two weeks under the high ball they were different than several games i've seen of them recently they were from the outset they were chasing those high balls like their lives dependent on it like uh kurti and cheslin were really they were going fast they were competing in the air i felt like we won the aerial battles uh comfortably uh they were super brave they fell hard many times and so i thought they had but it's really hard to pick out who the best player i think daniel and i'll endo won the man of the match i was a bit surprised by that not because i thought he didn't deserve it but i didn't see as much of him uh as some of those other players i think uh i think cheslin had a great game and with his kicking he's kind of a points machine now because his first try was one of those again where he kind of sidesteps in a in a in a telephone box to score so i think many of the players like uh represented them well and i think if you think we were all nervous for this first game that the box will be rusty and that you know that they and i'd say except for maybe one thing and i don't know if there's like a tackle missed tackle count because i don't have the stats the one says 21 missed tackles by the box i just felt like we missed a lot there like in the area close to the scrum and that led to that 14 point swing by the English at the end of the second half. It just kind of opened up space. Our cover defense is always good, but I think if I look at this match, I'd say that would be maybe my one area that I'd say was not good or not great at least. But the other things, the aerial battle was good. The scrums we really didn get dominance until late in the game There weren that many scrums and it took all the way to the end to get dominance I think our discipline when we were on defense close to our goal line was generally really quite good.

There were several sequences where the English looked like they would score but didn't and we didn't give penalties or we didn't give up too many. No, I agree with you. I think it was a question of missing tackles more like dropping off, falling off tackles, you know, not being dominant or whatever. And I suppose that was, you know, a byproduct of the lighter players. Once they had five loose forwards on there compared to their three locks, you know, there is a bit of a difference there, a different approach.

I think maybe Rossi, you know, tested it out, went back a little bit to Detroit and test it. Some of our colleagues called it a laboratory. Maybe it was a bit of a laboratory. But I do think the box would maybe be a little bit rusty. And they started firing towards the end of the match.

And I'll see. I'll probably improve a little bit. but I'm also expecting a lot of changes for the game against Scotland, I suppose. I expect after this game they will make many changes, but I looked at like the first 15 minutes was a little bit like the Australia game last year, like a really fast start where everything went our way, and I feel like we played it almost perfectly. And then there was a little bit of a lull where we lost momentum, but the English weren't scoring.

And then in the last 10 minutes, I just feel like we lost our concentration. but then in the second half and we didn't go completely to like a lockdown old school box style but we did go more physical more direct and you could just feel us taking control and then i think the both the speed of the game the physicality of the game and the alice park air caught up to the English because you could just kind of feel them losing touch. Well, SRP says there were 52,790 people at Alice Park out of 62,000. Do you buy that? I actually do, Embe.

I was quite surprised. When we got here today, we came quite early. I was nervous because it was empty. The streets were not very busy coming in. And I said to Krishna, I hope this is not like where we have 30,000 people and the atmosphere sucks but when we got into the stadium they have like a fan area like to the side of the stadium that i'd actually never seen before it was packed and so i knew that it wouldn't be like a half empty stadium but i was surprised if if i hadn't gotten the number i would have said it's about 80 to 85 percent full it seems like that's roughly 90 roughly what it was maybe it didn't like it didn't look like embarrassing it didn't feel dead the crowd was very engaged it was a good vibe and a good experience and all i can think is that the last few days of the like uh flash sales of tickets must have worked yeah i'm sure they did i mean they probably sold that many tickets not everybody pitched up so anyway people thank you for for paul for doing this for us.

I wanted to do this live, but like you said, I'm on holiday, so things are not the way they are supposed to be. So sorry for that. I'll do more work and get it done. One of the things I had to fix was the reflection behind me. So I'm sitting in the cold.

So that does reflect on the window. So thank you, Paul. So I appreciate it, man. It was a good game. I enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed the game too, Envia. I feel like except for 10 minutes of real stress in the middle, It was a more dominant game that you could enjoy in the second half. And I think the Vox did themselves proud for a first game. I know we'll get better. Okay, Paul.

Next week, Loftus. We'll talk again soon. Thank you. Okay, Envia. Have a great night.

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