Springboks still have a long way to go after Irish loss, says Ox Nche

Springbok prop Ox Nche was absolutely in his element on Saturday night and produced a man-of-the-match performance, but still ended up on the losing side as Ireland clinched a thrilling 25-24 win over the hosts in the second Test at Kings Park.

Nche was immense, absolutely decimating the Irish scrum, tackled like a machine and carried the ball like a champ in an action packed showing, but was incredibly unfortunate to see his team go down to a drop goal after the fulltime hooter.

It meant the series between the top two ranked teams in World Rugby would be shared at one-all after the Boks triumphed in the opener at Loftus, but Nche admitted that they still had plenty of work to do going into the rest of the international season.

“It is disappointing. The boys gave it their all, but there were a few small things that might have cost us the game. We still have a long way to go and plenty to work on going forward,” said Nche after the match.

“I think we should have backed ourselves with the ball more, instead of kicking a lot of possession away. I think that’s where we lost it.

“We were defending for most of the game, where they kept the ball more and tried to go through the phases. They lost momentum when they kicked. So we have a lot to learn from that.”

Slow start

Bok captain Siya Kolisi was also disappointed with the outcome and pointed to their slow start that allowed Ireland to take an early 10-0 lead, before ending the first half 16-6 up, that ultimately cost them in a very tight tussle.

“It is (heartbreaking) to lose like that. They started like we did last week. We weren’t as intense as we were last week. You can’t fall so far behind a team like Ireland like that. We did well to fight back, the bench came on and made an impact but the way we started wasn’t good enough,” explained Kolisi.

“They just had the upper hand, dominated us physically from the word go and that was the biggest thing. They started with high intensity and we were unable to keep up with them. So where we set the tone last week, this time we definitely didn’t, so big up to them.

“They are a very good team, as you can see from the result today. We knew it was never going to be easy and that they were going to fight throughout. Obviously we wanted to win, but we will learn from this and come back better.”

Thrilled captain

Irish captain Caelan Doris was absolutely thrilled that his team managed to come out on top, especially considering he received a yellow card in the second half that coincided with the Boks fight back to take the lead.

“It was a proper Test match that. We were pretty pleased with the way things had gone in the first half. But credit to the Springboks, they showed their class in that first 20 (minutes of the second half) to completely turn it around and get up by five points,” said Doris.

“Then the last 20 (minutes of the game) was just back and forth, and it is pure elation for us to get the win. In the last five minutes we just had to keep believing, we still had time, there were two points in it and we believed if we could get territory and up the other end we could score.”