SCORING THREE TRIES against the Springboks is an achievement in itself, even if it wasn’t much consolation for Ireland as they lost last weekend in Pretoria.

All three of the Irish scores were pleasing on the eye and underlined how dangerous Andy Farrell’s side can be when they’re accurate and brave in attack.

Frustratingly for the Ireland head coach, there were also many instances when the Irish attack stuttered or failed to get going.

Among the fixes required to get a better attacking return is the lineout, where a 71% return on Ireland’s throw was damaging as the Boks enjoyed 92% success on theirs. 

Every team is reliant on their lineout to function in order to launch their attack, so forwards coach Paul O’Connell and the likes of primary caller Tadhg Beirne and James Ryan will be keen to nail this part of their game in the second Test.

In the instance below, Ireland have a lineout on the Boks’ 10-metre line, a prime chance to use one of the strike plays they’ve been working on during the week.

Instead, referee Luke Pearce gives a free-kick against Ireland for a dummy throw by hooker Dan Sheehan.

It seems a tad harsh in that Sheehan doesn’t drastically dummy a throw, but there is clearly a momentary hesitation on his part. O’Connell and co. know they can’t afford to have even slight misconnections in their set-piece in the second Test.

Ireland did some excellent lineout work in this game but had issues in the final quarter.

Above, we see Boks flanker Pieter-Steph du Toit getting a hand through to slap Caelan Doris’ attempted transfer to scrum-half Craig Casey at the front of the lineout.

Doris has dummied a transfer off the top of the lineout, possibly trying to buy an offside penalty by tricking the Boks’ backline into racing forward, but Ireland will be frustrated that du Toit then gets his hand through.

They would have spoken about denying the Boks access through to spoil their lineout possession, as is the case here even if Ireland get a knock-on advantage.

With the ball so scrappy, the Boks are able to make the next breakdown a real fight but Ireland manage to get moving forward on the next phase, a Beirne tip-on sending sub hooker Rónan Kelleher into space before he’s taken down by RG Snyman.

As Kelleher carries, Pearce calls advantage over, which seems premature given that Ireland are still downfield from where du Toit knocked the ball on.

What’s even more frustrating for them is what happens next as Snyman gets up in an offside position and tackles Casey, driving him into the ground.

This is where the Ireland scrum-half is concussed.

As highlighted below, Beirne has arrived at the breakdown, creating the offside line but Snyman never retreats to an onside position before coming forward to tackle Casey once the ball is out.

The manner in which Snyman continues to drive Casey backwards after he has knocked the ball on is something we see a lot in rugby. Irish players have done similar in their time but thankfully, there usually aren’t unfortunate incidents of the tackled player’s head smashing back into the ground.

It’s a horrible blow for Casey and a frustrating episode for Ireland. A penalty here would have allowed them to close the scoreline to 13-11 heading into the final 15 minutes.

Instead, Ireland concede a scrum penalty from the Casey knock-on and a try to Cheslin Kolbe after James Lowe keeps Handré Pollard’s linekick in play. It’s a huge swing moment.

Soon after that Kolbe score, Ireland botch a lineout that initially looks like it’s been won.

Kelleher hits Ryan Baird at the tail, just clearing Snyman, but the flanker loses control of the ball as he tries to transfer it to scrum-half Conor Murray.

It’s a turnover on the Boks’ 10-metre line again.

Ireland had a lineout stolen cleanly by du Toit just a couple of minutes later having kicked a penalty into the South African 22.

It’s a good read from du Toit as Ireland look for the safety of the front in Doris, who is not their most prolific jumper.

The Springboks are an excellent defensive lineout team but it’s another costly loss of platform from Ireland as they trail 20-8 with just over 10 minutes of the game left.

Nailing their lineout will be a big focus for the second Test.

Ireland seem likely to highlight a couple of ruck inefficiencies too. Again, they did some great things in this part of the game, enjoying 67% quick ball compared to the Boks’ 53%. The South Africans only made one breakdown steal, while Ireland had five.

And yet, there were moments when Ireland needed to be more ruthless at the ruck. Below, we see Robbie Henshaw make a strong carry on first phase of a lineout attack, beating Jesse Kriel and powering forward into Damian de Allende.

Having passed to Henshaw, Aki latches onto the contest, looking to remove de Allende from the equation as Henshaw goes to ground.

But as Henshaw goes to ground, we see that de Allende wins the fight, managing to stay up on his feet as Aki goes off his.

De Allende is a threat to the ball and so Josh van der Flier, who initially latches onto Henshaw to drive him forward, has to adjust across and clear de Allende away as he looks to hook the ball backwards.

While Ireland retain possession, it’s slow ball after such a good carry and the Boks have had time to align their defence. Ox Nché gets off the line to deliver a dominant tackle on Beirne.

We see that Kwagga Smith then beats Calvin Nash to the ball for what looks like a turnover, only for Pearce to penalise Nché for not rolling away first.

It’s a tough one for the Boks given that Nché is making an effort to move off to the side. Smith’s sheer speed to the ball isn’t rewarded and Ireland kick three points.

Despite the positive scoreboard outcome, Ireland will feel they need to remove threats like de Allende more aggressively. The same applies to Synman below.

Synman jackals to force a clean turnover here but fortunately for Ireland, they have an advantage playing. They will still have been frustrated at Snyman winning the race to the ball ahead of Cian Healy.

From the ensuing scrum, replacement hooker Malcolm Marx won the Springboks’ one jackal penalty in this game, another key moment in the game when Ireland were trailing 13-8 in the 55th minute. 

They put together some strong early phases off the scrum but then bounce back to the isolated Ryan for a carry off Casey.

For jackalers like Marx, an isolated carry like this is an invitation.

Marx jackals from the outside of Marco van Staden’s tackle as van der Flier focuses on clearing Smith, who is a breakdown threat from the inside.

By the time Doris gets to Marx, he is in a strong position over the ball and the penalty duly arrives. With Ireland still very much in the game, it’s a crucial turnover.

Farrell’s men will be disappointed that they didn’t get greater return from a few close-range chances in this game.

As early as the seventh minute, they make an error on the South African tryline after deciding to use one of their five-metre tap tap plays from a penalty.

Sheehan carries first, then Doris swings back under the ruck in a ‘Leicester’ play. Watch how du Toit and Etzebeth do a superb job of stopping Doris dead in his tracks.

Maybe van der Flier and O’Mahony will feel they could have been earlier to latch onto Doris and drive him forward in the collision but it’s excellent Boks defence.

Still, Ireland are within sight of the line only to knock the ball on two phases later.

O’Mahony lifts the ball to lock Joe McCarthy as he feigns to carry himself but the pass is into McCarthy’s face and he can’t hold onto it.

The inaccuracy from Ireland means a big defensive win for the Boks, who have already taken a 7-0 lead. 

The Boks did a good job of defending Ireland’s five-metre plays in this game. We saw a new one from Farrell’s side in the second half as the forwards shuffled right for Murray to pass to them before a dummy maul set-up.

Van der Flier breaks off the dummy maul, which Ireland hope will attract all of the Boks forwards, but van Staden make a superb read and tackles van der Flier behind the gainline.

Fortunately for Ireland, the Boks stray offside just after and they get another penalty.

This time, Ireland are more direct as Kelleher carries and then Doris has a go off another of those lift passes, this time from Healy.

Doris goes very close here but just watch the try-saving effort from Boks replacement lock Salmaan Moerat, who is being held into the previous ruck by Ryan but managed to break free and just do enough to deny Doris a finish.

As we’ll see later, Ireland do finally manage to score from the resulting goal-line drop-out but they’d have been disappointed not to make one of their tap plays count.

There were some inaccuracies further out the pitch from Ireland in this game too.

The instance below comes on second phase of a lineout attack, with du Toit’s linespeed pressuring Crowley, who passes inside to Beirne for a knock-on.

Ireland have just spent the opening 11 minutes of the half defending in their own territory so energy is probably low but du Toit’s effort challenges their timing and it’s off.

Another good position is wasted.

Later in the second half, Ireland manage to create a promising situation down the left as their work-rate off the ball leads to a possible overload against a narrow Boks defence.

It’s no clear-cut try-scoring chance obviously but there are promising possibilities, only for Crowley’s pass to go to ground.

Again, Ireland are fortunate straight after as Boks scrum-half Grant Williams goes off his feet hunting Aki down after he has gathered the ball, but it would have been interesting to see what happened had Crowley’s pass gone to either Ciarán Frawley or Aki.

Despite all of the above, there was reason for Ireland to be pleased with their attack as they scored three slick tries.

Their first showed how patient Ireland can be in finding the opportunity to strike. Every teams wants to score early and no one likes going backwards, but Ireland are calm in manufacturing the chance on 12th phase of a visit to the Boks 22.

Below, we can see Crowley scanning as he swings from right to left.

What he identifies is that Sheehan is in space outside Boks right wing Cheslin Kolbe, something that the South Africans are generally comfortable with.

As highlighted below, Kolbe’s job is to be aggressive and pressure James Lowe [red], the second last attacker, while fullback Willie le Roux can close up on Sheehan from the backfield [yellow].

Crowley knows that Kolbe will also look to pressure his pass, possibly intercepting it, so the only way to get the ball into the space outside him is a ‘bridge pass,’ where the ball is lifted up over the head of the edge defender.

Again, the Boks are generally comfortable to accept the possibility of bridge passes, backing their backfield defenders to cover but also backing their edge defenders, like Kolbe, to turn quickly and work back at speed to help cover.

So even with bridge passes finding space against the Boks, you still need something special in that space to convert it into an opportunity. Ireland deliver something special.

Crowley has one last scan before Casey finds him, then the out-half plays an excellent bridge pass, not putting too much height on it and therefore giving the Boks more time to recover.

Sheehan – who has suffered a suspected ACL injury more than seven minutes before this – somehow conjures a sublime behind-the-back pass just as le Roux moves in to tackle him, finding Lowe sweeping around the back.

We can see that Kolbe has done a typically good job of turning back and so, Lowe has to produce a remarkable tightrope act to keep the ball in play and offload to fullback Jamie Osborne.

Kolbe lands a strong shot onto Lowe but the Ireland wing shows his power and balance to stay infield and gets his offload away just before Kriel can drive him into touch.

It’s a tidy finish from Osborne, who gathers after a juggle and dots down.

Lowe himself nearly had a try in the second half, producing a superb finish down the left only for the score to be disallowed.

Casey hits him from the turnover and Lowe skips beyond Marx.

Lowe then fends Pollard in the face to break clear and races into the left corner.

It’s a fantastic finish and a legal counter-attack to reward a determined passage of Irish defence, but it’s chalked off after TMO Ben Whitehouse draws Pearce’s attention to Kelleher hooking the ball backwards while off his feet in the turnover ruck.

Frustratingly for Ireland, Kelleher is simultaneously being neck-rolled by le Roux but the penalty decision goes in South Africa’s favour and Pollard gets a long-range shot at goal, which he misses.

Ireland’s second try comes from a clever goal-line drop-out play, something they have made a calling card. It’s another new play.

Lowe fields the restart and passes infield to Doris for the initial carry, with van der Flier, Baird, and Ryan designated to clear out.

Fullback Frawley makes a dart to the left of the ruck, trying to attract attention and eyes in that direction. 

Frawley’s run proves to be important as it holds Moerat on that side, rather than him folding to the other side of the ruck.

That leaves the Boks a body down to potentially stop what follows before the real action is on Ireland’s right-hand side.

Ireland have set up their standard pod of three forwards, with sub tighthead Finlay Bealham in the heart of it, Beirne on his outside, and Healy on his inside [red below].

Crowley [yellow above] is set up ‘in the boot’ out the back of pod, which is again standard for Ireland.

The joker in the pack is hooker Kelleher [pink above] who has set up just behind Healy, doing his best to remain as hidden as possible. He will be the key strike weapon.

Marx has to deal with the threat of Bealham carrying [red below], while Smith [yellow] is worried about the tip-on pass to Beirne or the sweep pass out the back to Crowley.

Loosehead prop Gerhard Steenekamp [pink below] thinks he has to worry about the tip-in pass from Bealham to Healy but that’s the genius of this play.

Healy fades to his left just before Bealham plays the ball, both luring Steenekamp to him and also opening the space for Kelleher to burst into.

The Boks are caught completely off guard and Kelleher bursts into space.

Kelleher has players flooding through in support to his right but Murray is racing up on his inside, so he draws Sasha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and puts his scrum-half away for a brilliant try.

It looks as though Ireland are suddenly within a chance of winning as the conversion brings them back to 20-15 but an error from Lowe off the restart and a dominant scrum penalty try essentially seals the game for the Boks.

Ireland do come up with a classy score in response.

First, Baird claims an excellent short restart by Crowley.

A few phases later, we get familiar shape and a string of passes from Ireland as they cut the Boks defence.

As we see below, van der Flier sweeps the ball out the back to Crowley and he then goes out the back door of Bealham to Nash.

Van Staden has sat down on Bealham’s line and the officials are happy it’s not obsruction, so Nash darts through the line inside the onrushing Kriel.

Nash’s wide pass bounces out to Lowe and it initially looks like the Boks will recover out to nip the attack in the bud.

But Lowe creates again.

He beats Kolbe’s tackle attempt with a hitch and acceleration, then shows his balance and strength once more as he rides Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s tackle long enough to get a one-handed offload away to Baird, who has swung to Lowe’s outside.

Baird is quick enough to finish into the left corner.

Ireland get the ball back once more from the restart but they’re unable to play out from deep and the Boks can celebrate.

As they rally themselves for the second Test, Ireland can take encouragement from their three excellent tries, as well as recognising that they left other opportunities out there in Pretoria.