Nick Mallett was effusive about the Boks' first-half dismantling of Italy — calling it error-free, suffocating rugby that left the Azzurri with nowhere to go — but he's not without reservation heading into Friday's France Test. His main concern is the front-row configuration: Mallett's preference would be to open with the most powerful loosehead-tighthead pairing and bring the athletes off the bench late, rather than Erasmus's approach of splitting the first and second choices across the starting XV and bench. He felt the scrum, while functional against Italy, didn't reach the dominance the Boks are capable of — and that gap could matter more against France. Mallett was full of praise for Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Van den Berg individually, and largely excused the second-half drop-off as an inevitable psychological shift when a game is already won by 45.