The Springboks' mental capacity to dig deep and come back twice from behind in a 23-18 win over Wales in Cardiff on Saturday was hailed by captain Siya Kolisi as 'a South African thing'.
South Africa was trailing by six points twice in the game but replacements like Malcolm Marx, Frans Steyn and Elton Jantjies made a huge impact when they entered the fray.
Marx was driven over from a close-range line-out seven minutes from time at a rainswept Principality Stadium.
Jantjies’ last kick of the match clinched the game following five earlier Springbok penalties — four from fly-half Handre Pollard and a monster effort from replacement Frans Steyn.
With this victory the Springboks finally got that elusive win over Wales in Cardiff in five attempts, having edged a World Cup semi-final 19-16 in Japan when the teams last met two years ago.
Kolisi told reporters at the post-match press conference that it is always tough playing the Welsh in front of their home crowd.
“We know the kind of team Wales are, it’s always been tough when we play against them. We know they are going to go for 80 minutes,” he said.
“But we work really hard and also I think it’s just a South African thing. We come from a country where people just don’t accept defeat.”
Adding that’s one thing the Springboks pride themselves on and coach Jacques Nienaber knows they can go to tough places and are able to live there for a very long time.
“We are very privileged to be able to do what we love and put smiles on people’s faces back home. We go through so many struggles, that people get so excited when we play.
Nienaber concurred: “We’re glad to break the hoodoo here. We got exactly what we thought we were going to get.”
He was still worried about the way the Springboks repeatedly gave away penalties, with fly-half Dan Biggar kicking all of Wales’ points.
“Our discipline was poor, especially in the first half. It’s something I thought we did well in the second half, and we found solutions to that.”
The game was marred by an incident in the 65th minute of the game with the scores level at 15-15 when a pitch invader entered the playing field and replacement Liam Williams had to jump over him while on the attack. This snuffed out any hope of the Welsh scoring a try.
Wayne Pivac, coach of Wales, said that was something you never want to see in a game. “I don’t know. We just saw a two-versus-one type situation forming up. You don’t want to see that in the game”.
This followed an incident last week when a serial pitch invader — who disrupted Ireland’s game against Japan on Saturday — lined up with the All Blacks for the New Zealand national anthem ahead of Wales’ 54-16 loss last week.
Pivac said it was disappointing but that there was nothing officials could have done about it.
Wales performed credibly against the Springboks although they had to do so without regular captain Alyn Wynn-Jones.
“If you look at the performance last week, coming up against South Africa in these conditions was always going to be a big ask, and I thought the boys came up well,” Pivac added.
