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NewsDay

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Boks looking for perfect game

Sport
DURBAN — One thing Heyneke Meyer will know by now is that the Springbok coaching job doesn’t get any easier after the team wins — all it does is increase the expectation and create pressure to chase perfection. It is still too early in his stint as coach and also too early in the season […]

DURBAN — One thing Heyneke Meyer will know by now is that the Springbok coaching job doesn’t get any easier after the team wins — all it does is increase the expectation and create pressure to chase perfection. It is still too early in his stint as coach and also too early in the season for perfection to be an anticipation of this young Springbok team, but Meyer will know after last week’s match in Johannesburg that his men will need to lift their performance levels in today’s final test against England at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium if the critics are to be satisfied. It is doubtful the Boks have performed better in the last decade, let alone the last four years, than they did for the first half hour of the Coca-Cola Park test. With Meyer’s plan working to perfection, and the big loose-forwards making some headway across the gainline almost every time they touched the ball, the England defenders were in disarray and the backs looked good when they were presented with an advantage in numbers. Had Morne Steyn had his goal-kicking boots on, and had the Boks taken one more try scoring opportunity, England could well have been laid to waste like Australia were in Johannesburg in 2008. But rugby can sometimes be as funny a game as cricket is, and there were a few little breaks early in the first half that changed momentum.