Junior Springboks’ message to upset fans after shock U20s loss

It was weird catching up with Bafana Nhleko in the wake of the shocking defeat of the Junior Springboks. Thursday has been a day of remarkably brutal weather in Paarl, so bad that the green South Africa jerseys were indistinguishable from the Italian white the more the muddy second half went on and the more the gloomy daylight turned into darkness.

Come full-time, there was no mistaking who was who. The Boks slunk away quietly following some short-lived warm-down stretching in one corner of the pitch. Everywhere else, though, excited Italy’s reaction rang around the tightly confined ground in celebration of their 34-26 ambush win.

The spectacular loss should have spelled the crushing end to South African hopes of winning their first Junior World Championship title since they last hosted the tournament in 2012. Instead, they reached the sanctuary of their marquee dressing room at the back of the Paarl Gimnasium to learn that they were very much still alive.

Georgia, whom the Boks had defeated on opening night in Stellenbosch, had unexpectedly done a 20-0 number on Argentina and it all left the outcome of Pool C shrouded in uncertainty heading into next Tuesday’s final round of matches.

Argentina, South Africa and Italy have five points with Georgia on four and the one-win-each situation will make for a dynamic conclusion when the Junior Springboks take on their hotel colleagues Argentina in Athlone some hours after Italy have played Georgia in Paarl.

It is a quirk of this age-grade U20s tournament that the 12 teams are accommodated across six hotels in Cape Town and it will surely make for an intriguing few days at the Southern Sun in Newlands with South Africa and Argentina sharing the same facilities in the run-up to their pool stage eliminator.

“You can’t run away from these things,” said Nhleko about a final day fixtures quirk that will be repeated elsewhere as Ireland and Fiji are also sharing the same accommodation elsewhere in the city. “The reality of the comp is that every team in our group is alive. We are very friendly with them [Argentina] but first and foremost we have got to make sure that we prep well for the game.”

They got caught short against Italy, making 10 changes to their starting XV from round one and also starting pitifully slowly in front of a capacity crowd at the tiny Paarl school ground. The head coach stood by his selection gambit. “I don’t think that is the reason we lost,” he insisted.

“We always had a plan in mind and the reality is the guys that were there didn’t execute, but we also had similar issues in the Georgia game. These are things we have to fix going forward. The scoreboard doesn’t lie. Italy were much better than us.

“They got ascendency on us in set-piece and when that happens you start conceding penalties and you lose the territory battle and those are the things they did very well. The start set the tone for the rest of the game. It was very difficult for us. I’m just glad in some ways that the boys bounced back and got back into the game and gave themselves a shot, but we couldn’t finish it off.

“Italy were fantastic. In the physical stakes, they were good. In the set-piece they were good. We have got to give credit… the Italian junior programme is very good. We watched them in the U20s and we knew it was going to be a tough game, we just didn’t execute our stuff as well as we should have.”

Nhleko now has his work cut out to get the South African home support back on side and he delivered a rallying call message to them ahead of their pool decider against the Argentinians. “I can imagine they are very disappointed in the result and perhaps our performance.

“All I can ask is to get behind these boys and get behind the team and hopefully we will be on the right side of it. We’re alive and we have got to learn quickly. This is not a time to feel sorry for ourselves. The most important thing is we are alive in the competition and if we do the right things we will be in the play-offs.”