Boks are perfectly prepared to win

17 September 2015 - 02:11 By Archie Henderson

There is always an air of excitement ahead of a world cup, be it football, cricket or even curling (winners this year: Sweden, men and Switzerland, women; Canada sucked). Rugby is something else. We will never win a soccer World Cup (let alone another Africa Cup of Nations) and might never win a cricket one, but we have won two Rugby World Cups, and ever since 1995 we've been contenders.The Boks go into this World Cup perfectly prepared. They are carrying a host of injuries, their coach appears not to have a clue that three of the matches will be played on soccer fields and everyone has written them off. That's the way it's always been and that's the way they like it.Ask any team what it's like to be favourites and they'll shudder. It brings added pressure to a situation that's already cooking. That's why England won't win this one: no team has ever been under such pressure. The tournament's marketing effort has been built around "bringing rugby home" and the entire pack of jock journos that used to live in Fleet Street has climbed aboard.The same for New Zealand, the defending champions. Everyone assumes the All Black juggernaut will steamroller the competition. That was also the assumption in 1991, 1999 and 2007 - when the World Cup was hosted in Europe. The ABs lost at all three, and were even beaten by the Boks in the 1997 third-place play-off.In assessing the Boks' chance at this World Cup, go back to the one 20 years ago. We laughed at their chances then and we even modified Leon Schuster's song to sing "Hier kom die Bokke, hier kom die Bokke. en die Bokke speel k*k". And we couldn't understand why Tiaan Strauss - the only man to have made Chuck Norris, well, k*k - had been left out of the team.In 2007 when the Boks won Bill for the second time, they had been beaten in successive matches by New Zealand, Australia and New Zealand again before going on an eight-match winning streak, scoring 373 points with only 102 scored against them, and culminating in a triumph over England in the final.So who will win it this time? Let's stick our necks out before Friday night's kick-off and make some guesses.The Boks will win their pool, and to those who think Samoa are a threat, here are the World Cup stats: in the last five World Cups, the Boks have had the Pacific islanders in their pool four times and the winning scores have been 42-14 (1995), 60-10 (2003), 59-7 (2007) and 13-5 (2011). The Boks know how to beat those brutes. As for Scotland, the other alleged danger in the group, forget them. Vern Cotter, their coach, doesn't even know where to play his captain, Greig Laidlaw: scrumhalf or flyhalf.It's in the playoffs where it gets really interesting, but I think the Boks can take England in the quarterfinals and perhaps we'll have a good ref - for a change - in the semis. That leaves the Boks and the Wallabies to contest the final - and that's too hard to call.Look out for Archie Henderson's daily column during the World Cup..

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