The Six Nations isn't the only European tournament kicking off in February

And he was the number one in super rugby for turnovers! We could have done with that yesterday

Shout out to Tupaea who made the match winning tackle on the French lock forcing a knock on

All that talk of B Team and all. Couldn’t resist.

I always felt the French were capable of one upset win. Last night in fact. A bit of novelty and rust on the ABs part coupled with some French propensity to surprise the ABs. And a bit of luck (provided by the TMO aka the bounce of the ball).

It nearly happened didn’t it?

But the ABs will likely win the next two more comfortably I reckon. They will respond to the lessons of last night. They won’t be happy with the scoreline and their accuracy.

But that’s just rust. Easily fixed.

The ABs wouldn’t have benefitted from a 50 point canter.

On the eye I didn’t think he was bad as some including Ben Smith who didn’t clearly bother to look at stats so I went and looked at Rugby Pass’ own stats!

Yeah time will tell with Razor

There were loads of changes for this match, injuries and against a side the media expected to wallop

He had a moderate season last year

Bench impact was improved a little towards the end with France last year

But it was still 9/13 with the Pumas loss a terrible one having been in control

But there will be no such sympathy this year with tests against the Boks at home (needs to win one) and a weekend French side to start

So yeah I’m a little nervy about him as well as Barrett the captain

Can he really rally the troops?

I noted he went off yesterday too and Ardie took over

It’s interesting the Boks rely on two very small wings who are phenomenal- Kolbe mainly

Will be interesting if TT and Love get time next week

Polly has what none of them have - experience, 2 gold medals. Each has their place in the team. Horses for courses and all that.

That the Springboks have 3 good options at 10 compared to most other teams that barely have one, is a good place to be. Considering we went to the RWC with Manie with <10 caps.

That Manie can have a great game and terrorize a teams defenses or have a mare and get replaced by someone with the dependency and quality of a Polly is strength.

Manie has X factor and I think in past Boks sides he’d be in the wilderness by now. I hope he gets to 50 caps with Boks. He’s a top guy.

Sacha has all the makings of a Polly/Manie hybrid. He has X-Factor and can control the game and was entrusted with both AB tests last year. He’s done some amazing stuff this year and it’s crazy how young he is.

Training with Tony Brown, Felix Jones, Polly, Damian, Willie, Manie is going to make him greater. Polly came through in his youth as a player with X-Factor. But that tends to get coached out of our 10s. Hopefully not anymore.

Whether the boks play an expansive game, a conservative game or something in between is going to come down to playing the conditions. Playing the situation. That’s real maturity.

And as we Saffers know - world cups are won by teams with solid 10s. End of.

The Boks last night looked undecided on attack because of an excellent Italy defence.

Their defence should not be scoffed at. It was excellent during the 6 Nations. It’s a strength they are building a platform off and it was a good test for our attacking mindset.

But our bread and butter, attacks off solid set pieces, that lead to KLA’a magnificent try (for example) is what won us back-to-back world cups. That and our defence. Defence against teams that thrive in broken play.

Which is the only real negative I took from our rusty performance last night. That we ran in 6 tries and conceded 3 tries is what will be most irritating to the Bok coaching team.

However, we must not forget that the type of defence we play is highly physically/cardio demanding and takes time to gel and click perfectly. It’s not going to click in a few weeks with players joining from all over the world.

And it wasn’t tested against the Baabaas.

Which is why these 4 tests before the RC are so important. Gives us time to work on the rust.

I think that’s why Rassie has threatened to rip up the selection plans for next weeks games. He’s probably intimating to the fact that rotating the squad is a good idea unless more game time is needed for the group to nail down the structures the coaches have given them.

The defensive structures were not nailed down last night. Lineouts weren’t perfect. Breakdowns were messy.

it’s back to the basics and practice makes perfect against Italy 2. The fancy 6 tries looks much better when you don’t concede any. And the Boks were excellent at not conceding tries last year.

Because when our defence works - it’s suffocating.

Sititi, Williams and Lomax

Rieko is also first choice at centre

Well he has been

But it was a pretty strong side