Peter Bills: Woeful mistakes from All Black dummies

All Black halfback Brendon Leonard was guilty of some stupid mistakes against the Springboks. Photo / Getty Images

Richie McCaw used diplomatic language to describe his side's clueless performance in Bloemfontein. "Perhaps we weren't smart enough to play at the right end of the field," the All Black captain said.

Never having aspirations to the diplomatic corps myself, I'll put it another way. This was the dumbest performance I've seen in years from an All Black side.

It brought to mind that old Basil Fawlty joke: "Who's using the family brain cell today, Sybil."

At times, you just shook your head in utter disbelief that so-called professional players could act so stupidly, be so dumb. The achingly simple mistakes that New Zealand made in this match must have had their coaching unit fuming as they watched from the stand at Vodacom Park.

Halfback Brendon Leonard put one scrum feed straight into his secondrow's feet. Irish referee Alain Rolland promptly penalised it. Lo and behold, at another scrum soon after, Leonard did the exact same thing and received the same punishment.

Tight-head prop Neemia Tialata - of all people - tried a ludicrous quick 22 drop out with all the dexterity of an elephant trying to play football. The mess he landed his side in resulted in a penalty which South Africa kicked. By the finish, that act alone had cost the All Blacks a losing bonus point.

Earlier, Leonard had been fortunate that his naive offside did not cost another three points, Pienaar's penalty kick striking an upright.

New Zealand worked themselves into a promising attacking position just about once in the entire first 40 minutes. And what happened? Leonard attacked around the back of a line-out and threw a pass straight to Springbok centre Jean de Villiers.

Before that, after New Zealand had conceded three successive penalties in no time, Jerome Kaino pulled down a maul and conceded another penalty, which was also goaled.

Such comic capers epitomised the All Blacks' game before half time.

Then there was the line-out throwing. Andrew Hore's first throw went straight over the top of the line-out and he was off target with more than one subsequent throw. Even when Keven Mealamu replaced him in the second half, he promptly threw one ball straight at South Africa's No 1 lineout expert, Victor Matfield.

But perhaps the height of the lunacy came in the second half with the Springboks having seen a 17-3 lead reduced to 20-16. A series of concerted drives by the New Zealanders had taken them into the South African 22. The Boks were gasping and clearly vulnerable. The decisive moment of the match loomed for if the All Blacks had scored then, they might well have closed out the game.

Yet first, Leonard's replacement Piri Weepu, took an age to release the ball, rearranging his colleagues as though they were pieces on a chess board. After all that time, which had allowed the South African defence to regroup and restructure, Weepu threw a nightmare pass which ended with Jaque Fourie scoring what was the decisive try down the other end of the field.

Weepu even compounded the felony by actually getting back to intercept the ball but then throwing another crazy pass which kept the move alive. The Springboks were generally poor at taking their scoring chances but even they couldn't look that particular gift horse in the mouth and Fourie's try finally pushed them decisively clear.

As if all this wasn't damning enough, other parts of the All Blacks' game were equally dire. They were penalised far too much at the breakdown, their work on the kick chase was poor and their handling of the high kick ahead was erratic and unpredictable. Nor was the support for the ball runner very impressive.

The South Africans were overwhelmingly superior but could have been caught. Does any side making these absurd mistakes deserve to prevail? Almost certainly not.