Willemse edges Boks to victory

The Boks recovered from their worst half in recent memory and a 15 point deficit to produce a dominant but still too error-ridden second half that left the game hanging in the balance until full back Damian Willemse, who was in excellent form for the hosts, kicked the winning points to break a 29-point deadlock and break the hearts of a gutsy, brave and tenacious Wales team.
When the Boks were awarded a penalty try in the 75th minute to give the hosts the lead for the first time, most teams would have given up.
However, Wales, with rugby at such a low ebb in their country and clearly knowing they were playing to restore lost pride, did not accept defeat.
Although they were at that point down to 12 men with three players - Louis Rees-Zammit, Alun Wyn Jones and Rhys Carre - in the bin, they for the umpteenth time prevented the Boks from exiting just after they’d scored points.
And when, off a penalty, they set up an attacking line-out, Wyn Jones came back onto the field to restore some balance, and yet it was still 15 against 13.
So how did the Boks let them score? But score they did as reserve hooker Dewi Lake peeled around to drive over and level the scores at 29-all.
Welsh captain Dan Biggar, who himself had been carded in the first half, then had a chance to put his team back into the lead with his conversion, but he pushed it to the right to leave the scores level.

Determined
Wales would probably have accepted the draw, and they probably deserved it too, but the Boks were determined to get the win that was expected for them, and they launched one final desperate attacking assault as the guests desperately tried to hang on.
The hooter sounded with the scores level, but Wales transgressed and Willemse, who took over the place-kicking duties when the out-of-form Elton Jantjies was yanked from the field at half-time, had an opportunity from around 35 metres out and from a position that was roughly halfway between the posts and the touchline if you looked at it laterally.
It has been a long time since Willemse has kicked for goal at top provincial level, let alone at test level, but he did kick a crucial conversion from an acute angle before that and he’d shown he had the bottle for the task.
When the flags were raised, he’d proved it. It wasn’t a long-distance kick like the one Morne Steyn kicked here to win the series against the British and Irish Lions in 2009, but it was greeted with almost as much delirium by a 51 000-strong crowd that has been starved of live international rugby.

Similarities
There were quite a few similarities with that pivotal second test of the 2009 Lions series, one being that the Boks just didn’t come out of the blocks, while the Welsh were ferocious and energetic.
While the Boks were inaccurate and made enough mistakes in the first 40 minutes to fill an entire season, the Welsh were clinical and profited from the hosts’ soft moments.
The pace of Rees-Zammit was not something that was showcased that often during last year’s Lions tour, but in this game, it came to the fore.
Give him space to work with and he is lethal, and the game had hardly started when the Welsh produced an attack from their half after two Bok errors, ironically one a dropped contestable kick from eventual man of the match Jasper Wiese and then one from the excellent Willemse, that too easily outflanked the Bok defence for Rees-Zammit to score in the corner.
Biggar failed to kick the angled conversion but he was on target with a drop-goal and after eight minutes, the Welsh were 8-0 ahead.
This was supposed to be Bok pivot Jantjies’ chance to shine, but from the early minutes, it was obvious it was going to be one of those days where he just hit the wrong notes.
His first field kicks were inaccurate and he hit the posts with his first penalty kick for goal. He kicked one penalty intended for the touchline into touch in goal, and then there was the wrong option of a cross kick onto Cheslin Kolbe, who was well marked by a player who was much taller than him.
Jantjies did kick one easier penalty attempt, but the best moment of the early minutes was one good Bok contest at an early line-out when they looked to be in trouble and Wiese carried up impressively.