Meyer admits Steyn mistake

Heyneke Meyer admitted after the 21 – 11 loss to New Zealand on Saturday that it had been a mistake to give Morné Steyn another chance after the break. Steyn’s wayward kicking cost the Boks a rare chance of victory over the All Blacks in New Zealand.

“Sitting here afterwards it is easy to make calls but it is a life and death situation for me and maybe I made the wrong call but Morné usually comes back and kicks well. Frans Steyn is a great goal-kicker and Ruan Pienaar can kick as well. You don’t just take a guy off for his goal-kicker.

“I’ve always said that I am going to bring Johan Goosen through and give him game time. But Johan had struggled with his goal-kicking in training during the week and he is still only 20-years-old and he hasn’t played for almost three months. I thought he did superbly for the 25 minutes he was on the field.

“But we could have changed the goal-kicker. We talked about it at half-time. I thought Morné would find his rhythm.

Captain Jean de Villiers also lamented giving the out-of-form Steyn one more chance.

“I don’t think that I am the one to give advice about goal-kicking. We discussed it at half time and we felt that we might want to give Ruan an opportunity but we thought to give Morné one more chance.

“He had one when we scored the try and he went off after that. You want to show confidence in your players as well and sometimes you have to make those difficult decisions.

“You make mistakes, I make mistakes. Unfortunately he couldn’t kick all of his goals but that doesn’t make him a bad player.”