All Blacks are a cert, the Boks are not

26 August 2016 - 10:29 By Mike Makaab

The Rugby Championship's opening fixtures have set the expected tone for the way forward. The All Blacks established themselves as certainties to win the 2016 competition, the Wallabies have a "mountain to climb" to close the gap on the world's No 1 rugby team and the Springboks looked pretty ordinary in their last-gasp home win against the Pumas, who will be hard-pressed to win more than a game.The Boks travel to Argentina to face the Pumas for the second time in just over a week and, unless they improve dramatically on their opening match, I'm afraid this could be the one game that the Argentinians will win.I am going to stick my neck out and predict a narrow win for the South Africans, but only because their opponents are not that convincing and have had to travel to and from South Africa to play this one, whereas our boys only make the trip to Argentina.In the other game, New Zealand are overwhelming favourites to repeat their thrashing of Australia in Sydney last week.The Wallabies have selected a more experienced team to try to stop the black wave. But these All Blacks are too quick, too powerful, too smart, too skilful and too full of self-belief for anyone to predict anything other than an All Blacks win by a comfortable margin...

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