There was only five points in it at the end and Gavin Rich, writing on Supersport.com, feels that both sets of coaches will be kicking themselves this morning.
"Both the coaching groups of the two teams involved in Saturday’s first test between the Springboks and the British and Irish Lions can look back at the game and feel they may have made a mess of it.
Fortunately for the Springboks, the players were good enough to win it with a controlled opening 55 minutes that set them on the road to a 26-21 victory and first blood in the three match series. This was in spite of what can only be described as a near suicidal spate of second half substitutions that beggared belief and completely robbed the Boks of their earlier momentum.
After being down 26-7, the Lions ended with such dominance that they were able to talk confidently afterwards of squaring the series in Pretoria next week. Confidence was not something they would have envisaged having when their scrum was being destroyed by Beast and company and they were being mauled back 30 metres at a time by the Springboks."
RSS feed
