‘We saw opportunities’ – Attack guru Tony Brown says Springboks found weaknesses in Irish defence

After all, the New Zealander has been recruited by Rassie Erasmus to weaponise the Springboks’ attack and the first impressions were pretty impressive on Saturday.

Ireland looked stunned by the South African width as they scored a stunning early try and Brown, who masterminded the Japanese attack that undid Ireland at the 2019 World Cup, said he'd spotted areas they could go after in Simon Easterby’s rearguard.

��We always plan the attack around the teams that we're playing, so we've put a lot of time and effort into analysing Ireland around how they defend, how they attack the breakdown, so we saw a few opportunities,” he said.

“Ultimately, we always look to plan around the team we're playing.

South Africa tour daily - July 8th

“It was a really tough Test match, both teams were going pretty hard at the breakdowns and there was a lot of messy rugby.

“But the things we're trying to do on attack had some really good signs, especially in the first half where we created a lot of momentum and width and the boys were able to apply a lot of pressure and score a pretty good try early on.

The addition of Brown seemed to energise the world champions, with established players like Pieter-Steph du Toit and Siya Kolisi getting their hands on the ball in open country.

“Obviously, the South African team have some outstanding loose forwards, it's not a new or different tactic, other teams do the same. It's more around getting the best out of the players we have out there,” Brown said.

“Pieter-Steph and Siya have got amazing skillsets. They're big players, pretty dynamic with ball in hand so it's around giving them the license and freedom to do what they do well and the rest of the team complementing that.

"We're always developing. Our attack only works if the forwards are good.

"They need to be able to get gainline for us and carry the ball, pass, clean out. They've got so many demands on them. It's been nice to keep challenging them to be able to move the ball and hopefully we're going to continue to get better through the year.”

Although Brown’s attack did carve Ireland open at times, it was Irish errors that handed them two tries in the second-half.

The first saw the rest of the backline beaten to the punch by Cheslin Kolbe after James Lowe did brilliantly to keep a Handre Pollard kick in, the second was a Lowe error as he fumbled Sacha Feinberg Mngomezulu’s restart when it appeared to be heading towards the goal-line and a scrum-back.

“I've seen James Lowe do so many amazing things on the rugby field around keeping the ball in play and he actually created a try by keeping it in play on the other side,” Brown said of Kolbe’s try.

“I've seen him do it a thousand times and I've seen Cheslin commit to the chase and win games of rugby with his chase.

“For me, it was two brilliant bits of rugby that Cheslin maybe won out because maybe the Irish players didn't back up James Lowe. So both Cheslin and Kurt-Lee have an amazing ability to beat players and out-work players. You're seeing them impact so much and win games of rugby through their effort.

“I don't think I've seen such a dominant scrum ever in the game of rugby than the penalty try.

“I know that with Japan, it was ball in and ball out as quick as you could. It's very nice to coach the South African team where the set-piece is quality, they're big men and they dominate the gainline. You can do a lot of good things on the rugby field if you've got speed and momentum.”

He’s expecting the breakdown to be right up there again in Durban.

“It's going to be fierce again,” he said.

“Ireland have traditionally been strong at the breakdown defensively. From an attacking point of view, we've got to be better. Ireland want to slow our ball down and disrupt our attack so we've got to make sure our breakdown is quality and our ball carry is quality.”