Cape Town – Despite South Africa A often kicking away hard-earned possession, coach Mzwandile Stick felt that his team “did try to play” in their 28-14 defeat to Munster, and that it was their execution that let them down.
The visitors trailed 21-7 at halftime, and even though the replacements made a strong impact in the second half, they could only add seven more points to their tally in front of over 41 000 spectators at the Pairc Ui Chaoimh stadium in Cork on Thursday night.
The SA A forwards got stuck in at the scrums and lineouts, where the likes of captain Thomas du Toit, Ntuthuko Mchunu and Ruan Nortje were prominent, while No 8 Jean-Luc du Preez was a powerful ball-carrier as well.
But scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies halted the momentum by slowing things down with a number of telegraphed box-kicks, and flyhalf Johan Goosen was also guilty of lining up too deep on attack.
That was in sharp contrast to Munster, who held onto the ball in slippery conditions and were rewarded with four tries on the night.
“Our guys actually started by looking for opportunities – they tried to play. It’s just that if you see the errors that we’ve made, it shows that a lot of our players have got a lot to learn when it comes to playing the conditions in the northern hemisphere,” Stick said afterwards.
“Munster kicked well in the first half. They’ve applied it, put the kicks behind us and applied pressure on us where we couldn’t really attack from deep.
“So, it’s not like we didn’t try. But our game drivers, which are our nines and 10s, the main thing for them was to put us in the right areas.
“But once again, we didn’t execute that plan very well in the first half as you saw, and we gave them soft penalties with the offsides, and they got 22-metre entries in our half and they capitalised from it.
“I think that was the difference in the game. Let’s say for example we cut one (Munster) try, or maybe we converted an opportunity we had later in the first half, it could have been a different ball-game.
“The boys came (to the fore in the) second half, they gave everything – set-pieces, like you saw. But it’s just the way we’re inconsistent. so I don’t know if it’s maybe from our side or maybe I don’t know – I’m not really a scrum expert – but there were a couple of times that I felt like we had dominance, but we didn’t get rewarded.
“So, it’s a funny game. Certain things didn’t go your way. But for Munster, I think we must give credit to them.”
Points-Scorers
Munster – Tries: Shane Daly, Simon Zebo, Diarmuid Barron, Mike Haley. Conversions: Ben Healy (4).
SA A – Tries: Aphelele Fassi, Sikhumbuzo Notshe. Conversions: Johan Goosen (1), Gianni Lombard (1).
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