The world-champion Springboks have failed to deliver consistent enough performances in 2022 worthy of more than an above-average rating, according to MARK KEOHANE.

In his TIMESLive column, Keohane argues that there was a fair expectation for the Boks to have gone unbeaten in the Republic from the start of the international season, and not doing so was “an underachievement for a squad as talented as the 2019 World Cup winners”.

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“The Springboks in their five home Test matches in 2022 score an underwhelming C. Wales had never won a Test in South Africa and the All Blacks, beaten at home in a series by Ireland for the first time in history, had never been more vulnerable. The script should have read five Bok wins from five starts,” Keohane writes.

“The world champions should have made a collective statement as telling and convincing as we saw individually from Malcolm Marx in Nelspruit and Lukhanyo Am in Johannesburg. But they didn’t.

“Their report card reads C when it should have read A-plus.”

Indeed, the ease with which the world champions dispatched Wales in the deciding third Test – despite poor substitutions – supports the expectation that South Africa should have whitewashed the tourists. And similar issues plagued the Boks at Ellis Park where contentious selections and substitutions saved the All Blacks from a historic slump.

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