Loosehead prop Andrew Porter has struggled to explain how the Ireland scrum disintegrated against the powerhouse Springbok pack in Dublin.
Ireland conceded six penalties from 16 scrum feeds at the Aviva Stadium last Saturday.
Porter and replacement front rower Paddy McCarthy both received yellow cards, while referee Matthew Carley also awarded a penalty try following another scrum disintegration.
WATCH: Every beautiful Bok scrum against Ireland
Asked by the Irish Independent to explain what went wrong, Porter replied: “I don’t know. You have a plan going into a game, obviously. South Africa have a plan as well. Their plan worked out, ours didn’t.
“In the moment, you feel like you’re in, you have a good shot, and then I suppose it’s just after that, it feels like it’s just that surge.
“It’s obviously tough to deal with out there. It’s tough out there in the moment, I suppose, to fix those problems. When you’ve given away a few penalties, and I suppose you have that other side where probably the ref has that in his head that they’re the dominant scrum. I take responsibility a lot for that. Like your bad day at the office, and that was just one of them.”
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Porter added that he was “pleading my case as best I could to the ref, trying to get some clarification. Sometimes they’re not the easiest people to talk to out there. Obviously there’s a lot of pressure on them to make decisions. And as you can see on the weekend, you had to make a lot.”
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