Graham Henry was pleased with his team's performance. Photo / Getty Images
Graham Henry paid tribute to the pride and courage of his All Blacks after the world champions had been silenced in their Cape Town lair.
Henry praised the accuracy and determination of his new-look New Zealand side's 19-0 win. "I have huge pride in what the guys did.
They showed tremendous courage; that is what won the game ... their courage and their fitness in the last 20 minutes.
"As a coach, you feel very proud that they had that courage and that togetherness. Our defence was excellent. There were a lot of times we were under pressure on our own line and South Africa had a number of very positive scrum positions to score from.
"Yet the guys stuck to the task, showed a lot of skill, a lot of guts and good positional sense to stop them scoring. They had the guts to hang in there. I thought the way they ended the match in the last 20 minutes was extraordinary."
Henry refused to condemn Daniel Carter for his astonishingly inept goalkicking performance which brought him just two successes in nine attempts.
Carter missed four penalty goals, two dropped goals and a conversion, landing just two conversions from nine attempts. For him, it was an incredible series of misses.
"I think it was just the way I was striking the ball," he said afterwards. "I didn't really have much rhythm out there. It was just down to bad timing.
"It was one of those things: you give 100 per cent and it just doesn't come off. But you've got to look at the bigger picture. To win here is no easy feat, so it was a great achievement. Definitely in the second half I thought our tactical kicking really stepped up, making them come out of their own 22, which was tough. That was one of the reasons we got home in the end.
"Now we can sit back and let our bodies recover, because it was an extremely physical game.
"The Springboks and Wallabies can beat each other up [over the next two weeks] and we can sit back and see how they both go."
