All Blacks’ Savea pays tribute to courageous Siya

SPRINGBOK skipper Siya Kolisi and All Blacks vice-captain Ardie Savea share a unique friendship. They pay each other the ultimate respect by trying to “smash” one another on the field, but are like brothers off it.

So, with Kolisi delaying surgery to his fractured nose to face his rival and friend in Cape Town over the weekend, and then delivering a virtuoso performance capped by a try to lead the Boks to a fourth consecutive victory over the All Blacks and claim the Freedom Cup for the first time since 2009, Savea was the first in the queue to pay tribute to the larger-than-life Bok captain.

“Siya’s the man … he showed a lot of courage, obviously, playing with the injury to his face, so it speaks a lot about Siya,” Savea said, after the 18-12 defeat to the Boks.

The victory for the home team at DHL Stadium was almost a carbon copy of the previous weekend’s victory at Ellis Park when the Boks showed both their mental strength and never-say-die attitude to come from behind and finish stronger in the final 10 minutes to take both the points and the glory.

Both performances were reminiscent of the champion All Blacks of yore who never knew when they were beaten and often delivered the Boks with a late sucker punch right to the gut. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Savea could fully understand the point of difference between the two arch-rivals at the moment.

“They understand just how they want to play,” he said.

“They’ve got great players in their squad and that’s a testament to everyone in their team and how they operate and manage the game. We had lots of opportunities and I thought South Africa scrambled really well out wide.

“There were times in the game when we got down to the right areas of the park, but we just either lost the ball at the breakdown or gave away a penalty.

“You can’t do that to a Springbok side, they feed off that. They’ll punish us. They came down into our end of the field and scored points against us, but we’ve made it hard for ourselves.”

The All Blacks are likely to face some fierce criticism upon their return home, particularly with Argentina having also moved above them on the Rugby Championship table into second place behind the table-topping Boks. The woeful Wallabies are far adrift in last place.

Scott Robertson’s team’s lack of clinical execution in the final quarter – both in terms of territory and time of the match – has been the primary cause of concern. Savea is certainly feeling the pain along with the All Blacks supporters back home in New Zealand

“We just can’t seem to finish it off. It hurts. To be honest, I don’t know yet (how the All Blacks will fix it),” he said.

“It’s more a feeling of disappointment and just gutted for the men in the change room. We need to look at ourselves and try and rectify that, because it’s two weeks now we haven’t finished things off. So yeah, disappointed.”