By the numbers: how the Boks pulled clear
Possession, territory and a bench that changed the game — the data behind a result that flattered no one.
The scoreboard told one story; the data told the same one louder. For an hour the match was a coin-toss — then the territory map turned green at one end and stayed there.
The platform was the set-piece. A scrum that won penalties on demand and a lineout that refused to misfire handed the kickers a field-position stranglehold the Barbarians never broke.
Then came the bench — a wave of fresh forwards arriving exactly as the game loosened. The last twenty minutes were played almost entirely in one half, and the points followed.
Pretty it was not, always. Effective it was, utterly. This is a side that has made winning ugly into an art form — and the numbers say it is only getting better at it.
