No need for young Boks and their management to panic

There was a palpable and understandable disappointment around South Africa long before the final whistle sounded in Wellington on Saturday morning.

While few had actually put their money on the Springboks winning the opening Tri-Nations clash against the All Blacks, there seemed to be good reason to be hopeful.

Certainly the fighting talk coming out of the Bok camp in the buildup - admittedly much of it spoken from the relative safety of their base on the wrong side of the Tasman Sea - suggested we might get better than a 41-20 defeat.

Yes, the Boks did play with guts. True, they did play till the last and never gave up, even when some distance behind. And Stuart Dickinson was just the latest in a long line of Antopidean referees who somehow conspired to award all the 50/50 calls against the Boks.

But while this did play a role in the result, there can be no escaping the fact that the Boks were beaten by a better team and on the day they played a significant part in their own downfall.

Those who read my preview will know that I highlighted precision as the key word for the Bok win recipe. Whereas they did not quite bring out the old 12-bore and shoot themselves in the feet this time, they did make it extremely difficult for themselves by making a slew of handling mistakes, tactical kicking blunders and other petty errors which were the ultimate difference between the sides.

The post-match statistics showed that the Boks did win enough ball to win. It was what they did with the ball which was so alarming and which brought home the horrible truth that South African rugby is still some way behind when it comes the precision and finesse necessary to put away the big guns.

Time and again the Boks built up impressively to what looked like a possible try, only for it all to be wasted by sloppy handling or wrong options. It does seem that old habit of players panicking once the ball has gone through several phases is still present.

On the night, the Bok problems may have started at halfback. Scott Robertson was brilliant at No8 for the All Blacks, but Justin Marshall would have been my man of the match.

He completely outplayed Bolla Conradie, who looked a little pedestrian in comparison to his normal zippy self and will need to lift his game if he plays in Brisbane. In Conradie's defence, hopefully against the Wallabies he will be offered more protection by the forwards than he received in Wellington.

If all of this paints a pretty depressing picture that is because it is depressing. I cannot go with those who say that the Boks can be proud after their effort - not when the difference was 21 points, and I don't care how flattering the final scoreline was.

At test level the result was a hiding and it would be a sad indictment of what we expect from the Boks if we were to make out that the second biggest loss ever to the All Blacks is something we should just gloss over.

But is it a reason for us to commit mass rugby suicide and start the all-too-predictable clamour for team and management changes that usually follow a defeat of this nature? Not at all.

As has been pointed out before, this is a young team, and it is also a relatively new team. The All Blacks also fielded 11 changes from the side that played the first match of last year's Tri-Nations, but they had a wealth of experience to call on, particularly at halfback and fullback.

The one thing that a new team requires more than anything else before they can start putting it together it is time. And that is why if there is one bit of advice the Boks should heed after the Wellington defeat it is not to press any panic buttons.

Skipper Corne Krige might not be far wrong in suggesting that this is a special team in the making.

But in order for it to become a consistent winning team at the highest level it needs to play together rather more than it has to this point.

The lack of precision of the Bok performance on Saturday was due to many things, but lack of experience and the absence of the gelling substance which is applied to combinations when they have played together often is high on the list.

For many of the players in important positions it was the first really tough test that they were playing. Because of the process used to arrive at the best team, many of those combinations had not spent time together under fire.

While the buildup tests provided the Boks with a chance to gain confidence with victories over the likes of Wales and Samoa, they also encouraged bad habits.

The soft try scored by Mark Hammett was the sort of score that the Boks could easily have given away against the Welsh or Argentinians. Against those teams you know you can come back and cancel it out by scoring yourself. Not against the All Blacks.

New Zealand scored some great tries, but several of them were the product of South African mistakes and the sort of looseness that they could get away with against the other teams but not against Tri-Nations opposition.

The reason I am still upbeat despite all of this is that these problems can all be remedied if the Bok team as it is now just stays together and the selectors resist the temptation to panic.

The Boks showed in the first half hour what they are capable of. They must just fine-tune and become more efficient in the aspect of the game where South Africa has consistently lagged in the post-isolation era, namely ball retention and option taking.

The best way to get it right is for this team to build up the innate understanding between combinations that comes with playing several test matches together under the sort of pressure they faced on Saturday.