All the talk before the match was about what a tough Test this would be, England’s players and coaches spoke about how they wanted to “front up”, “take them on physically”, and “match them up front”, as the assistant coach Richard Cockerill put it: “You know what’s coming with the Springboks.” All of which was true enough. It was a nasty Test, played on a nasty evening, when winter seemed to have come rushing in all of a sudden on a stiff, swirling wind, and with a lick of drizzle. It was a game of scrums, thumps, slips, smashes, and penalties, played under high pressure.
And in all that it was, like Cockerill said, everything you would expect from a Test against the Springboks. Thing is, thirty minutes in, it became painfully obvious there was a lot more to this South Africa team too. It was as if England had been so busy looking at the club their opponent had in their right hand that they hadn’t noticed the dagger they were holding behind their back in the left. Because South Africa weren’t so much stronger than England, but they were a whole lot sharper and savvier, the gap between the teams was in the precision of their passing, and the rapier pace they had out wide.
