Boks will feel the heat in Buenos Aires, says Nick Mallett

After a relentless Argentina matched the Springboks in several key areas in Johannesburg, South Africa can expect to feel even more heat in Saturday’s return clash in Buenos Aires, former Bok coach Nick Mallet says.

Though they escaped with a hair-raising 22-21 win over Los Pumas at Ellis Park, Mallett says the Boks will face a tough battle at the 50,000-seat Estadio Velez Sarsfield (kickoff 9.10pm SA time).

Mallett said South Africa have to step up and also fix their poor discipline that let them down in Johannesburg.

“This will be a lesson for the Boks, who now have to go and play them over there and it’s going to be a very, very tough game,” he said. “Argentina were very good and the Boks will have to really step up.

“I’d really like to congratulate Argentina on their performance. Because in the areas we thought we were going to be good they matched us.

“In the scrum, they managed to compete against us. In the line-outs they certainly got parity.

“In tackling they managed to double-hit us all the time and we did not get much momentum. Argentina’s ball-in-hand play was better than ours.

“South Africa’s discipline was very poor and we were giving penalties away on their line-out throws. I think we had three where we interfered with the jumpers and there were others around the breakdown.

“But worst of all, when we had line-outs ourselves we were unable to get any movement from them. The delivery was poor and we often did not get it through three or four phases, and we never managed to put pressure on them in the second half.

“If we look at that second half, which by itself was Argentina’s, they dominated completely for probably 30 of those 40 minutes.

“It was the long-range try [that made a difference] where we managed to get an interception try where Faf de Klerk did very well by picking up the ball and played Manie Libbok.

“But Argentina still came back and scored a few tries at the end and if had not been for Manie’s kick they could have sneaked a win.”

Argentina coach Michael Cheika said his team is growing in stature as the World Cup kickoff in September approaches.

“We played better than last week when we beat Australia, though we didn’t get the result we wanted,” he said.

“In the first half, we had two or three unnecessary offside penalties, so we have to be more disciplined, make good decisions and not give an easy way into our half.

“If we are in their 22, or near the tryline, we have to work out the best strategy. We can’t wait to play the rematch, because the group are in a very good physical and mental moment.”

Argentina — who have England, Japan, Samoa and Chile in their World Cup pool — meet Spain in a warm-up fixture on August 26.

Bok coach Jacques Nienaber said he expects the team’s performances to become more consistent once the squad becomes more settled.

“The easiest way to get cohesiveness is in team selection and that’s probably where we put the team under pressure,” he said.

“Every week they’ve had a different prop, a different hooker, a different rhythm, so that’s almost the nice thing as we take them out their rhythm because of the way we have chopped and changed in terms of team selection.

“As we get closer to the World Cup there will definitely be more consistency in selection.”

Nienaber names his team to face Argentina on Tuesday.

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