'We have kickers,' says Bok No 9 Hendrikse in defence of goalkicking malfunction

In Dublin

Springbok scrumhalf Jaden Hendrikse expressed confidence in the goalkickers in his team despite the malfunctioning of that key department in Saturday's 19-16 loss against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium.

The goal-kicking responsibilities were shared by Cheslin Kolbe and Damian Willemse. The latter nailed the first penalty, but missed another one in the first half.

That led to the Kolbe taking over the kicking responsibilities, and he slotted a penalty on the stroke of half-time.

Kolbe then proceeded to miss the conversions from the tries scored by Franco Mostert and Kurt-Lee Arendse.

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The seven points that were missed in the game proved to be crucial in the long run as Ireland's captain Johnny Sexton got away with missing the two conversions from the Josh van der Flier and Mack Hansen touchdowns.

The lack of a regular goalkicker also meant the Boks were forced to go for the corner even when there were kickable penalties.

That South African went into the Test without a recognised goalkicker was always an outside concern, especially with regular kickers in Elton Jantjies and Handre Pollard out of the team for personal and injury-related reasons respectively.

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They got away with it against Argentina in Buenos Aires, but Test rugby is unremitting in how weaknesses can be cruelly exposed.

Hendrikse was insistent that they can improve in any department and that they didn't utilise their chances well.

"We have kickers who can kick and there's time for us to improve in any department," Hendrikse said.

"We had a few chances, and we had a lot of entries in the 22, but we