MARK KEOHANE: Rugby fans deserve more than mediocre Bok performance
THE Springboks got the best possible start to lead Australia 14-3 in Brisbane. But they simply weren’t good enough to put away the worst Australian team of the past two decades.The most disappointing aspect of the Springboks’ 23-17 defeat is that they lost to a side low on confidence, devoid of all-round menace, and among the weakest run-on combinations to play for the Wallabies in the professional era.Australia were there to be hammered, but the Boks, despite scoring seven points within three minutes, and being gifted an intercept, couldn’t make the two-score advantage into something match defining.They were again uninspiring in Brisbane, and once Australia had reduced the 11 point deficit the Boks never produced a threatening play in the last 40 minutes.Former Springbok captain Jean de Villiers, leader of the Boks this time in 2015, doesn’t easily criticise the current players. Yet even he seemed stumped on Saturday afternoon, as he tried to make sense of the second-half effort ag...
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