Johannesburg - Springbok coach Jacques Nienaber looked decidedly uncomfortable answering questions regarding his selection of Joseph Dweba at hooker ahead of star player Malcolm Marx after the Boks had lost 35-23 to the All Blacks, and rightly so.
Marx had been incredible in the Boks' win the week before in Nelspruit but was on the bench, even when Bongi Mbonambi was injured in training mid-week.
Unfortunately, for the inexperienced Dweba — not to mention the team, the All Blacks targeted his suspect line-out throwing, with Sam Whitelock poaching his first throw-in just minutes into the match.
Dweba was taken off 10 minutes before half-time and that begged the question of why he started in the first place?
“There's always a reason — a rugby reason why we did that, but that's privileged,” said Nienaber.
“The players all know the reason. Every single player knows why we went that route and there's a very logical reason why we did that.”
And victorious All Blacks coach Ian Foster did not beat about the bush when asked if they targeted Dweba in the line-out.
“Jip, we did,” he smiled, and again Springbok supporters are wondering why Nienaber did not allow Marx to continue where he left off in Nelspruit.
When asked about his substitutions, which saw Dweba, Ox Nche and Duane Vermeulen all leaving the field before half-time, Nienaber said: “As I've said before, players have a specific job to do and the moment they've done their job or they're not doing their job anymore, that's when we take them off.
“It's been discussed with the players. They know that is how it works. A classic example is Jasper Wiese in the third Test against Wales. He had a specific job to do.
“The moment we see a drop in performance, we will do the substitution because we have six forwards on the bench.
“And I think that's where we differ from other teams. We do things a little bit differently.
“Each player has a specific job and must give everything for as long as he can and the moment he can't do that job anymore, then we take him off.”
Regarding the team performance in general, Nienaber said: “We weren't as accurate as we were last week and they kept offloading, taking high risks which we didn't contain that well,” he said.
“I thought we did well to come back — 15-0 down against the All Blacks is a tough ask to get back into the game, which we managed to do in the back end of the first half and up to 73 minutes.
“And then we slipped at the back end. We were over the tryline three times but we got zero points for that and rightly so,” Nienaber continued. “There were nice opportunities but sometimes it goes against you.
“The six-two bench split sometimes works for you and sometimes against you. I think since we have been back, we have coached 45 games and we've probably gone with a sixtwo split more than 30 times and it did bring us some positive results with a World Cup win and series victory over the British & Irish Lions, but in saying that we know it is a risk if you get a backline injury and it's just unfortunate.”
The Boks have a week off now to lick their considerable wounds and then travel to Australia for back-to-back Tests against the Wallabies.
@MikeGreenaway67