2oceansvibe’s bi-weekly sports columnist, Sean Wilson, is today staring the recovery process from the hangover that the Springboks’ performance gave him this weekend. The Boks delivered what was a decidedly lackluster performance against Argentina in Mendoza on Saturday, that’s for sure.

Awful. Horrible. Painful. Every time you close your eyes and try not to think about it, the pain just gets worse. How could there be so much mindlessness? I guess it was predictable. But enough about my hangover.

Saying that Saturday’s 16-all draw with Argentina has caused some anger among South African fans is the biggest understatement in rugby since the protestors of the infamous “flour bomb” test in 1981 were described as “being a bit miffed”.

Plenty of the vitriol that’s been spewed has been justified, even some stuff that hasn’t been preceded with the contractual obligation of saying “All credit to Argentina”. However, saying that it went against people’s expectations of seeing some more imaginative rugby is way off the mark.

The build-up to this test made it obvious that the game plan was going to be as monolithic as possible. How else do you interpret dropping the whippetty Keegan Daniel for the behemoth frame of Jacques Potgieter (especially when the selection required moving the other behemoth frame of Willem Alberts into a position that generally requires more whippettiness)?

You can’t look at that selection, choose to watch the game, and then act in surprise about the team’s lack of creativity. It makes sense to get upset at the level of execution of the game plan, but complaining about a lack of imagination is just not reading what was on the tin. It’s like going to eat at a Spur, getting upset about your cold onion rings and complaining about the fact that they didn’t bring you sushi.

The pack was sold to us as a reactive selection to the powerful onslaught the Argentinean forwards would bring. Heyneke Meyer said the Springboks needed extra bulk in the pack to deal with that, so he acted accordingly. Then they couldn’t deal with the power of the onslaught. It is one of those things that is often described on Twitter as #thatawkwardmoment.

In a team performance that was far below standard, it’s probably futile to single out scapegoats on the field. In fact, it would gravely underemphasise the collective frailty to attribute it to the shortcomings of certain individuals. So let’s get started, shall we?

If Heyneke Meyer plans to give some individuals some serious tongue-lashing treatment in the Springbok post-match video session, he would be well served to organise a guest appearance from Nick Mallett. We all thought that he would be a huge asset to the SuperSport panel, but who could have predicted that we would watch a test match and his post-match comments would make him the undoubted man of the match?

We’ve all known how passionate he is about all things rugby, but it’s still extraordinary to witness the sheer and utter determination he has to make sure he stays off Andries Bekker’s Christmas card list.

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