De Villiers first test ...

As big a build up as I have seen in SA in long while leading into the Boks first real test as World Champions (still has a nice ring to it). The Boks where disappointing at best and real letdown. A 19-8 loss to the All Balcks should never to acceptable to an SA rugby public who expect much more.

Lets start with the positives the return of Joe Van Niekerk was (at least for me) a pleasant surprise and the more I see of Conrad Jantjes at test level the more I'm convinced he's the real deal, although you've gotta hope that PDV opts for the experience of Monty at fullback and pushes Jantjes out to the wing.

Jean De Villiers also continues to impress this season although he will hopefully partner Frans Steyn in the midfield come next Saturday (unlikely with PDV's liking for Adi Jacobs).

The bad, was the fact that we never got to pressurize the All Balck line-out, only getting our first feed after more than 30 minutes. Disappointingly that we never managed to exploit the absence of Richie McCaw either as the All Blacks are at least 10-15% worse off without him.

Butch James was also disappointing and had one of his worse games in a Bok jersey for a while but Butch is a quality player and my money is on him bouncing back stronger than ever next week.

The downright ugly was the Bok scrum and the worrying thing is that De Villiers doesn't have much else in his squad to call on - Mujati didn't fair much better than CJ and Guthro, it would be unfair to expect The Beast at 22 to come in and rectify the scrum, with apologies to 'ol Will a prop a prop my kongdom for a prop! (or the selection of BJ Botha). Equally as ugly was the lack of leadership once John Smit left the field, we heard in the build-up to the match how the core of the team was full of leadership, but once Smitty left the field none of Victor Matfield, Jaun Smith, Jean De Villiers, Butch James, CJ van der Linde etc. stuck up their hand and with Smit out for the rest of the tour things aren't looking all that pretty.

Here's hoping the Boks can turn things around next week. Courtesy of the kind folk at RugbyDump here are some of the highlights from the match.