News

`I`m a bad loser` - De Villiers

Saturday 19th July 2008

Try time: Lote Tuqiri dives over for Australia's first five-pointer

South Africa coach Peter de Villiers was unimpressed with the Springboks' 9-16 Tri-Nations loss to Australia at Perth on Saturday.

The world champions' celebrations after beating the All Blacks on home soil a week ago were shortlived as they failed to deliver against a wobbly Wallaby outfit with a flat performance which earned them a losing bonus-point.

The two try to nil win by Australia sees them join South Africa and New Zealand on one win apiece in the early stage of the competition.

The crowd of 41,838 saw a match that went right down to the last minute with a drop-goal from Berrick Barnes sealing the Wallabies victory.

"We can look for a lot of excuses if we want to but the bottom line is they outplayed us and they were better at the breakdown," De Villiers said after the match.

"We were a bit off the pace today. There wasn't a lot of second phase ball that we could play from. They outplayed us on the ground and they were more clinical.

"We didn't look for chances to play the game and put them under pressure. Then again we had four chances to score tries that we didn't take and, at this level if you don't take your chances you will pay for it."

The Boks would not have been happy with their overall effort which lacked the intent and intensity of Dunedin. But, given as it was their third Tri-Nations Test in as many weeks, perhaps that was understandable.

"Heading into this match, we didn't know what to expect from them [Australia]," said De Villiers.

"But at least now we can take this loss as well as the video footage to see where it all went wrong and make sure we rectify what went wrong.

"The Wallabies always had an advantage having video annalysis from our previous two games, at least now we can do the same.

"I'm sad to have lost, and I'll be the first to admit it, I'm a very bad loser.

"We're not very satisfied with our tour because we came here to try and win all our games. It's not that easy, but it's what we came to do. But now we can go back home and build on that."