Eager to see mystery Boks

21 July 2011 - 01:29 By Simnikiwe Xabanisa
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Simnikiwe Xabanisa
Simnikiwe Xabanisa
Image: SUPPLIED

The South African sports fan is a beast after my own heart.

I've worked out that one of the main reasons I'm still wasting precious space on this planet is because I tend to go through life dikbek. An eternal pessimist, my theory is that I'm double-daring life into surprising me in spite of itself.

The reverse psychology has worked a treat: I've worked for a newspaper I never thought I'd work for when I was dreaming of being a chartered accountant, and I've been to places that were never on the horizon when the sun set in the old Ciskei.

Hell, I've had girlfriends - current one included - who I never thought would look twice at me when I was bribing girls to accompany me to the matric dance.

South African fans are very similar in that they also expect the worst until they're proven emphatically wrong.

Take our hosting the soccer World Cup, for instance. During the build-up, we heartily joined Germany, England and Australia as they took turns bashing our hosting credentials. Yet we were the first to tell anyone who cared to listen "we told you so" when it turned out to be a world-class event.

The latest exhibition of this gees is the current dumping on the Springboks' so-called B-team.

Am I the only beer-mug-is-half-full guy genuinely excited about the Tri-Nations opener against the Aussies, which for the first time in over four years won't feature a Bok team with a million test caps between them?

The first part that revs my engine about that team is the speedy back three of Gio Aplon, Lwazi Mvovo and Bjorn Basson.

They're a bit black, I know, but I don't buy the argument about their size because the Aussies have the smallest backline doing the rounds in test rugby. I'm more interested in what they can do.

Most victims of the Aplon sidestep don't know the fact until after he's scored. Mvovo has a happy knack of scoring important tries, or has everyone already forgotten the efforts against England late last year, and the Bulls in June?

Basson is simply a sniper. How else can you score nine Super rugby tries when only Zane Kirchner passes to you in the Bulls team?

Centres Wynand Olivier and Juan de Jongh are strike runners for different reasons: Olivier tries to run through things and De Jongh around them.

Whether they do get a successful pass between them - or indeed to anyone else in the team - will be part of the fun on Saturday.

The pairing of Morne Steyn and Ruan Pienaar at halfback is proof that the coaches aren't being reckless with the team as they're going for at least one proven combination - one formed in a primary school in Bloem.

And am I the only one keen on seeing if Ashley Johnson is the same player without his afro?

Further up front, the big fellas have a lot to prove. I've always liked Johann Muller, but even I don't know how he's wandered onto a Bok World Cup squad.

Flip van der Merwe has one last chance to prove that the Bulls got their pecking order wrong, while Dean Greyling and Werner Kruger want to be lurking in the wings in case the likes of Gurthro Steenkamp and Brian Mujati can't make it to New Zealand.

Perhaps fittingly for our "B-team" - they did take the Qantas B-plane to Sydney - we're not expecting them to beat a full-strength Wallabies.

But I'm looking forward to watching a game where I have no idea what might happen.

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