It’s not often in these troubled times that the opposition coach is under greater pressure than the Springbok coach, but that will be the case at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Saturday when Australia play South Africa. Eddie Jones has now seen his team lose three matches in a row and in a World Cup year, the natives are getting restless.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the World Cup was being played elsewhere, or if the Wallabies were not the reigning champions, but Australia is a nation used to success on the sports field and losing three in a row is not far short of a crisis.
It would all add up to a rosy-hued scenario were it not for the fact that the Springboks haven’t won a game in Australia since the year of their sole Tri-Nations title in 1998. That year Nick Mallett’s men were grateful for a nerveless kicking display from Percy Montgomery (of all people) and won 14-13 in a match in which neither side scored in the final quarter.
Two seasons ago the Boks managed a 14-14 draw and the close similarity to the 1998 score line was echoed by the fact that both matches were played in Perth, South Africa’s home from home in Australia, and their base for the World Cup later this year.
Away from Perth, things are somewhat different and you have to go back to Ian McIntosh’s tourists of 1993 for the last Springbok Test-win outside of Western Australia. Mac’s men won the first Test of the series 19-12 at the Sydney Football Ground, but lost the last two.
It is, in fact, 32 years since the Boks last won in Brisbane and although isolation intervened and the two nations have only played each other on a regular basis for the last decade, the weight of history is something that cannot be overlooked, however much young players might insist the media makes too much of it and that records are there to be broken.
After all, the same players will be first in the queue to tell you that Australia have an equally poor record in South Africa, winning just twice since the end of isolation. What history tells us, then, is that the Springboks and Wallabies are traditionally well matched and tend to win their home games.
The difference ahead of this game is that we know a lot more about both teams than we did prior to the Cape Town Test of three weeks ago. We know, for instance, that the result in Sydney doesn’t amount to a hill of beans (to misappropriate the words of Humphrey Bogart) because the battle is for second place in this year’s tournament.
More significantly for the longer term, we know the Wallaby pack is in serious need of reconstruction and that their traditional strength at inside centre is in temporary abeyance.
Steve Kefu is still traumatised by the battering he received at the hands of De Wet Barry, and Elton Flatley’s performance against the All Blacks had the locals desperately seeking news on Stirling Mortlock’s recovery from serious injury.
It’s hard to sympathise, of course. For a decade the Wallaby pack was held together by John Eales, and its back line by Tim Horan. Players like these come along rarely and the coach must simply learn to cope with more utilitarian talents. All of which may make it seem that South Africa only have to turn up to win and, as history proves, that is far from the truth. South Africa’s problems lie in areas diametrically opposed to those of Australia, which may add up to a game as tight as the one at Newlands.
The Springbok ‘tight five†is coming together and Barry has earned the right to be persevered with at inside centre. It’s the back-row combination and the rest of the backs that are causing Rudolph Straeuli sleepless nights.
The reintroduction of the fit-again Joe van Niekerk in place of Wickus van Heerden will go some way to enlivening the back row, but the real arguments begin behind the pack. If one of the Bulls’ halfback pairing is dropped, does it mean the other should go, too? Probably.
Is there any point in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic among the back three? Admittedly it would be hard for anyone to have a worse game than Brent Russell against New Zealand, but he was the match winner against Australia in Cape Town and played brilliantly in the corresponding fixture last year.
If Russell was deemed too big a risk to play at fullback, then he should have been given his head on the right wing ahead of the sadly out-of-form Stefan Terblanche. As for the outside centre position, the gods have frowned on Straeuli’s rabbit-out-of-the-hat selection of Gus Theron by striking him down with a hamstring injury, so Jorrie Muller makes his debut with Gcobani Bobo, covering all the outside back positions on the bench.
Whichever combination the armchair critic may prefer, however, there is no point lamenting its poor defensive aspect for, with the exception of Barry, there is no one left in this country capable of inspiring fear in the opposition in the manner of Henry Honiball, Joggie Jansen or Japie Mulder.
Let them, instead, try and break more tackles than they miss and put a smile on our faces through the audacity of their attack rather than the sorry mess of their defence.
And, ultimately, who cares if they win or lose?
The All Blacks will win the Tri-Nations, an achievement that will be forgotten by the end of November, when the World Cup is decided.