At halftime the Springboks led the Samoans by 23-3 and they stopped Samoa scoring for most of the second half whilst themselves adding just 12 points. The final score ended up being 35-8.

It was definitely not an awe-inspiring performance by any stretch of the imagination. in fairness it was the "second team" that came to out of the the change rooms at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, but there were basic errors in both the handling and decision making departments.

The only good thing that stood out in this match was the South African rugby team's ability to defend under huge pressure on their line for large parts of the match. The only try scored by Samoa was due to some loose play by the Springboks in their own 22, which they did throughout the match.

Even though Francois Steyn scored a try he made a few mistakes which reminded all watching of his youth and inexperience, bringing back some memories on his fielding of the ball after full time was up in the Super 14 final and not kicking the ball out, which would have given the Sharks the victory. In today's match he tried to force a pass a few times costing South Africa valuable possession.

Captain John Smit also seemed to have a couple moments of memory loss thinking he was a fly-half and not a hooker. He twice had the ball in good forward going possession and instead of either running into contact to setup a new phase or passing the ball to one of the backs, he chose to kick! And both kicks went out on the full resulting in a loss of metres for the team.

Credit has to go to the Samoan rugby team who did come into this match as underdogs with South Africa having beaten them all 4 times they've played each other previously, with South Africa 3 times out of the now 5 matches having put 60 points on the board. They managed to starve the Springboks of possession pretty well and also broke up the the SA play.

One player that played well was Luke Watson, getting some good runs and also showing a couple deft touches with his passing. Another player that did well with the little ball that he did get was JP Pietersen, as usual. He made a lovely break gliding through a seemingly non-existent gap setting up the try scored by Pedrie Wannenburg.

Samoa disrupted the scrums a lot, mostly illegally and this resulted in one of their props being shown a yellow card, he was the second Samoan player to be sent off the field for ten minutes. The other Samoan player to be sent off for ten minutes was as a result of repeated infringements in the loose rucks, with referee Michael Changleng having warned the players he'd show a yellow card to the next player to transgress. Captain at the time since John Smit had been replaced, Bob Skinstad, was also yellow-carded - his was for a professional foul that slowed down the cleaning out of the ruck when Samoa looked set to score.

Strangely enough Derick Hougaard got man of the match.

Scorers:

South Africa

John Smit on 19 minutes

JP Pietersen on 23 minutes

Francois Steyn on 32 minutes

Pedrie Wannenburg on 58 minutes

Percy Montgomery on 63 minutes

Derick Hougaard kicked one conversion and two penalties with Percy Montgomery kicking over the last conversion

Samoa

Anitelela Tuilaga on 76 minutes

Gavin William with one penalty kick