A clearly peeved Eddie Jones stomped his way out of Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night as he refused to give any excuses for the abject display of the Wallabies on Saturday, while vowing that the Australians “will be better next week, I can guarantee you that.”
The 63-year-old lost his cool as the session wrapped up, after a pointed question about his reservations regarding the Springbok selection, saying: I tell you what you are good at … South Africans are good at winning, so you don’t have to be a smartass, mate.”
“We will bounce back,” he insisted angrily, while nervous laughter tried to break the tension of the moment.
“We were well and truly beaten today by a Springboks side that our mate is calling a B-team. I never knew that there was a Springbok team that was called the B-team but now we have a new term.
“We weren’t good enough, so we have to front up next week. That is the only thing.”
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Jones did not mince his words after the match in which his charges were dissected 43-12 in the opening clash of the Rugby Championship and left the stadium precinct seething after the post-match briefing, in which his emotion eventually got the better of him.
“It is a bad day at the office,” Jones said diplomatically at first.
“I don’t want to make any excuses for my team. We must front up and we have to play better than that. We will be better next week.”
“They (the Boks) were good today,” he added. “They were good with their forwards’ carry. I thought (Manie) Liibbok at 10, when they had an opportunity to move the ball, they moved it skillfully.
“They took their opportunities, and they were clinical. They were pretty impressive.”
The Wallabies were outscored six tries to two and were forced to play with meagre amounts of possession and territory, despite starting the game the better of the two sides. Two of those tries were penalty tries, while they also served two yellow card sanctions.
“The discipline breakdown comes from pressure,” Jones explained.
“If you look at the stats, they had 66% territory and 66% possession, so when you are under that sort of pressure players make mistakes. We were forced into error by the pressure …
“Where does it start? It normally starts at the set-piece.
“We potentially could have had an advantage at the line-out, but we didn’t take that advantage. In the scrum, in the second half particularly, we were beaten badly.”
Jones and his charges will make the long trek back to Australia this week. There, they will face the Pumas on Saturday in Sydney before ending the Championship away against New Zealand.
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