France
and England both came unstuck as they started their Southern
Hemisphere tours on Saturday.
Marc
Lièvremont's Grand Slam winners were ruthlessly brushed
aside by World Champions South Africa, going down 42-17 in
Cape Town, while Martin Johnson's England lost 27-17 to
Australia in Perth despite being awarded two penalty tries.
Lièvremont had spoken before Saturday's game about his fears
that France's tired squad could be exposed, and so it proved
as the Boks ran in five tries to record their convincing
win.
The home
side raced into a 17-0 lead after just 10 minutes with
number eight Pierre Spies and winger Gio Aplon both going
over. Morne Steyn's unerring boot added a further seven
points via two conversions and a penalty before France were
given a glimmer of hope by a try of their own from Clermont
winger Aurélien Rougerie.
Scrum-half Morgan Parra kicked the conversion and a penalty,
but South Africa added try number three before the break
when prop Guthro Steenkamp touched down.
The
South Africans scored two more tries after the restart, with
Aplon doubling up before Francois Louw also got on the
scoresheet, while France got a late consolation when
replacement winger Marc Andreu snuck in.
Lièvremont admitted France had been blown away by South
Africa's vibrant opening as they were caught napping at
Newlands.
"After a
catastrophic start to the match it was difficult to come
back from that position. The defeat is hard for us to
accept, but we knew it was going to be intense. It wasn't
all negative, there were some positive points, but we know
how solid the South Africans are. It was easy for them to
feed off each one of our mistakes," said the French head
coach.
Lièvremont went on to add that he believed France's problems
had been more mental than physical, while skipper Thierry
Dusautoir said hasty conclusions should not be drawn from
the one-off Test.
"We're
one year from the World Cup but I don't think we should jump
to grand conclusions after this match. We've got a good team
and we still need to work," he said.
France
will now travel on to Argentina as they continue their
summer commitments.
England
manager Johnson laid into his players after they went down
27-17 to Australia in Perth despite enjoying complete
domination at the scrum.
Johnson
was particularly scathing about England's weak defence, with
Australia capitalizing fully on 30 missed tackles to run in
three tries against the tourists.
"We said
we should be angry with ourselves," he told the press
afterwards. "The scrum played a big factor in the game but
not enough for us to win. We make it too easy for the
opposition," he lamented.
Johnson
admitted England started poorly - "We were more than a
little off the pace," he said - but had still developed
enough chances to have won the match. "But if you concede
three tries you are probably not going to win. The missed
tackle count was not healthy," he added.
Australia were 14-0 up at half-time thanks to
converted tries from Rocky Elsom and Quade Cooper, but
England rallied after the break via a penalty try and five
points from the boot of fly-half Toby Flood.
Cooper
then stole in for his second try of the match before
England's dominant scrum earned them a second penalty try,
with Flood's conversion again reducing the deficit to four
points. But just when an unlikely win appeared on the cards
the Aussies did just enough to pull clear thanks to a brace
of late penalties which sealed the result.
The two
sides are set to meet again next weekend as England continue
their tours of Australia and New Zealand.
In the
weekend's other internationals New Zealand overwhelmed
Ireland 66-28, with the tourists severely handicapped by
Jamie Heaslip's first-half red card, while Scotland won
24-16 in Argentina. Samoa, meanwhile, opened their Pacific
Nations Cup campaign with a narrow 24-23 win over Tonga in
Apia.
