SPOTLIGHT: Despite being on top of the Rugby Championship table, South Africa’s tournament stats make for bleak reading.
Heading into Saturday’s decider against Felipe Contepomi’s Argentina, South Africa will need a solitary match point to clinch the title for the first time since 2019.
That being said, New Zealand and Argentina have outperformed the World Champions in most of the tournament’s stats thus far.
South Africa is the worst-performing side in the competition on the defensive front with an 84 percent tackle success rate placing them fourth behind Australia, Argentina and New Zealand, who boasts the highest success rate with 87.7 percent.
In terms of set-pieces, South Africa is in third place with an 85.4 percent success rate with Argentina slightly behind on 84.8 percent in the line-outs.
In the scrums, South Africa languishes at the bottom at 78 percent with New Zealand on top with a 90 percent success rate.
Rucks won is pretty even with South Africa, Argentina and Australia all on 96 percent and New Zealand slightly below them on 95 percent.
The biggest issue for South Africa, as it proved in this past weekend’s Test against Argentina, is discipline.
South Africa has conceded the most yellow cards in the tournament with seven, with New Zealand just behind them with six and Australia with three. Argentina is yet to have a player in the sinbin.
One would think that with the addition of Jaco Peyper to the coaching team, this stat would be much lower.
These are some concerns for the coaching staff despite what has been a relatively successful season thus far, with the Springboks beating Australia and New Zealand twice to reclaim the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate and the Freedom Cup respectively before losing to Argentina.
The Springboks’ scramble defence is what keeps them in matches.
An example of this was the second Test against New Zealand in Cape Town, where the visitors beat 37 tackle attempts but failed to score a single try during the match.
The Springboks are still fine-tuning the balance between attack and defence under new assistant coaches Tony Brown and Jerry Flannery, but they’ll need to find that balance sooner than later before embarking on their end-of-year tour later this year in November.
Stats source: The Rugby Championship
