Boks must live up to billing

22 September 2011 - 03:17 By Simnikiwe Xabanisa
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Simnikiwe Xabanisa
Simnikiwe Xabanisa
Image: SUPPLIED

Two years ago, I wrote that if this current Springbok team wasn't the best ever to wear the green and gold, they were doing a great job of pretending to be.

There probably was a little hyperbole in that statement, but the Boks had just won the Tri-Nations by whitewashing the All Blacks in all three of the games they had played against them.

They had also claimed the title by winning five of their six games. Add a series win over the British and Irish Lions earlier and you can see where I was coming from.

A couple of years later, the vagaries of age and indifferent form have conspired to make that bold assertion seem a little hasty.

In fact, the Bok halo appears to have slipped to the extent that I found myself praying for what no self-respecting South African ever should - an Australian victory over Ireland on Saturday.

Like everybody else, I figured Ireland would be a much better bet in the quarterfinals for the weary old Boks than a Wallabies side which has beaten them in four of their last five contests.

Judging by suggestions that the Boks should throw their last pool game against Samoa to avoid the Aussies after their defeat at Ireland's hands, we're obviously pessimistic about the world champions' chances of beating the Wallabies and the All Blacks on successive weekends.

This is especially so if you consider that the Boks would have played Samoa the week before - a fixture which normally leaves them nursing a few injuries - and would still need to play the final after playing their Tri-Nations rivals.

It's a pretty negative way to look at the situation.

Though the Boks wouldn't have minded had the draw offered them the low road to an unprecedented title defence, as was the case four years ago, they have rightly been handed the toughest way imaginable to make history.

If they want to be the first ever team to defend the Webb Ellis Cup, they will have to treat the obstacles in their way merely as a measure of what it ought to take for them to create that piece of history.

Should they pull it off, it would be a two-finger salute to a certain former Bok coach, a rugby writing firm in Cape Town and a nation of doubting Thomases.

But to do so they have to nip in the bud this new Australian bogey they've created .

Sure, the Aussies, a bit like the Boks do with the All Blacks, appear to have a style that troubles the defending champions.

But Ireland showed how to unhinge the attacking blur that is the Aussies. You have to play with intensity; attack their scrum and lineouts; slow down their ball at the rucks; and put in a good defensive day at the office.

This is a basic blueprint to winning all rugby games, but the Aussie scrum is particularly vulnerable because its cornerstone is Ben Alexander, a loosehead prop who is playing at tighthead.

Ireland got lucky with Stephen Moore and David Pocock pulling up lame, and although that probably won't be the case for the Boks, it does reveal a lack of depth.

The Aussies also display the inconsistency of young teams in their formative years.

And if the Boks are looking for reasons why they should beat the Aussies, they have only to consider how rusty they were in Durban when they narrowly lost 14-9 in the Tri-Nations.

The Boks have been kept together for this long because they are believed to be the best this country has ever produced. What better time to prove it?

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