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Habana rues missed chance

Saturday 19th July 2008

Habana: 'I let the team down'

South Africa star Bryan Habana believes he let his country down during Saturday's 19-6 Tri-Nations defeat to Australia in Perth.

The wing went over in the corner in the last quarter of the game for what looked like a crucial try, but video evidence revealed that he had lost control of the ball in the act of scoring.

Australia replacement Ryan Cross forced the error with a last-ditch tackle, but Habana - world player of the year for 2007 - reckons he should have done better.

"It is a bit difficult to say exactly what happened," said Habana.

"But the standard I set myself, I feel I let the team down in that situation. I could have maybe finished off better.

"After having played a lot of rugby and played at the highest level for so long I think I could have maybe done a little better.

"With the pressure I put on myself to make a difference and make a huge contribution to the team, I let myself personally down and I let the rest of the team down.

"Credit to Ryan Cross, but we as a Springbok team pride ourselves on execution of specific things, and I wasn't able to execute.

"At the end of the day you don't get many opportunities on the international circuit to execute.

"We had a couple of executions where we didn't go to plan. And that probably cost us the game more than the Wallabies really beat us."

The loss came on the back of South Africa's stunning turnaround to beat New Zealand in Dunedin and captain Victor Matfield admitted that the Boks failed to replicate the efforts of last week.

"The intensity definitely wasn't quite up to what it was like last week," he said.

"But again, I think we created about three or four chances in that first half. And if we took them, I think it probably would have given us that boost we wanted.

"But we didn't use that opportunity and the game went away from us."

The world champions looked a little road-weary for much of the match but Matfield refused to use fatigue as an excuse for the loss.

"It is difficult to say, but it probably did play a role. But that is no excuse," he said.

"It is still a test match and we came out and went out to win that game. We disappointed ourselves and hopefully in three weeks time that intensity will be right back up there.

"We have three games at home. If we do well in those we are in with a good chance of winning the Tri-Nations."