Boks' loss not a disaster

There's nothing like an unexpected defeat to drive South Africa into a collective frenzy of self-flagellation.

All it took this time was the Springboks losing to a competent, intelligent Irish side and the whole nation went into mourning.

Suddenly Heyneke Meyer was "a stupid and conservative Afrikaans guy", like he intimated ahead of the game when referring to how he is regarded in South Africa.

Suddenly the gifted Handré Pollard, who was immense against the world champion All Blacks, had to go back to rugby school, while Pat Lambie did the grown-up stuff at flyhalf.

A bit like the Supersport promo that shows a guy trashing the office after his team loses a rugby game, we like to think this shows we care. Closer to the truth is that it shows our insecurity as a nation.

Too often we link our wellbeing to sporting results: win against the All Blacks and we're the greatest; and lose to Ireland and we're the worst.

As with all criticism and praise, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. However, the Saffers venting online this week weren't having that. But I digress.

If anything, there were more than enough reasons the loss made sense.

The Irish are the Six Nations champions, the Boks were underdone going into the game, and there is such a thing as the opposition playing better.

Joe Schmidt's team did two things that went a long way towards ensuring they would win - they matched the Boks physically and were smarter.

No disrespect to Meyer's team and the exciting new path on which they have embarked, but being smarter than them is still not such a difficult thing to be.

The game also showed how important the breakdown is in the modern game.

In the old days winning your scrums and line-outs meant more than half the job was done towards victory, but teams with less firepower have found ways to nullify that in recent years.

Those things are an unyielding defence and basically making the breakdown ungovernable.

The South African approach to that area in the past was similar, where they sought to make things unplayable by simply winning the collisions and rendering the subsequent possession nothing more than shop-soiled goods.

Then they got smart with the arrival of Richie Gray. But when you're underdone you're probably also half a yard off the pace.

Coupled with the conditions underfoot and a team that decides to use the boot in the ruck, it was always going to be a bigger mess than usual down there.

When one looks at Ireland's approach to defending the rolling maul (by not engaging), the theme that emerges from the so-called debacle in Dublin is that the Boks were out-thought and outfought.

But one of the things we need to accept with the Boks' chosen new path of giving the ball air is that it is going to run into some speed bumps on the way to being perfected.

There will be days when the conditions aren't right for it, and there will be days when the opposition calls their bluff.

Theirs will be to gauge when and where to play and not doggedly stick to a preconceived approach, like they did for so long with the kicking.

So, a little perspective is due in that the Boks finally beat the All Blacks under Meyer - a stated ambition for the year - and they didn't have the typical third-year blues a Springbok coach suffers.

That's why as a South African rugby fan you have to ask yourself: When would we rather lose to Ireland? This year or next year?