If South Africa beat New Zealand in Christchurch on Saturday it will be a miracle, but not because the All Blacks are a great side, for they are not, and not because the Springboks are poor, for they are far from that. No, victory is bizarrely unlikely because the Springboks will take the field dragging tons of emotional baggage behind them.
That baggage will be enough to negate the fact that the All Blacks are riven with injuries and illness, that their coach is scared enough of the Springbok pack to have recalled Greg Sommerville, and that despite spending 80% of last week’s Tri-Nations opener camped on Australia’s 22, they managed but one try and a slender 16-7 victory.
In the home side’s favour is the fact that South Africa have only won a single Test match in New Zealand since 1981, and lost their past seven encounters against their traditional foe. You have to go back to Ellis Park 2000 for the Springboks’ last win, a bizarre 46-40 encounter that turned out to be Nick Mallett’s penultimate game as national coach.
Consequently there are plenty of members of Graham Henry’s side who don’t know what it feels like to lose against the Springboks. Equally, only Percy Montgomery, Os du Randt, Albert van den Berg and Breyton Paulse have played in winning Springbok teams against the All Blacks.
Players know that history is bunk and the good ones go out with the intention of rewriting it every time they play. But it would be foolish to deny that South African teams have a problem against New Zealand at every level of the game. The generations of Springboks who have grown up in the past decade have replaced a healthy respect for Kiwi rugby with barely disguised trepidation.
Perhaps it’s because of that deep-seated insecurity that the paper-thin veneer of Springbok confidence was peeled off last Saturday. Deep down the players knew that they could not beat the All Blacks in Christchurch, so they chose a low-profile match they knew they could win against the Pacific Islanders in Gosford to air their grievances with the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu).
The Springboks wore white armbands to express their solidarity with the South African Rugby Players Association (Sarpa), effectively the union of professional rugby players in this country. Sarpa chair Hennie le Roux is of the opinion that Sarfu president Brian van Rooyen is in the habit of making unilateral decisions. The resignation statement this week of Sarfu deputy president Keith Parkinson lends support to that view.
If Sarpa’s argument with Sarfu (and specifically Van Rooyen’s role therein, it seems) were a simple squabble over money it may not have adversely affected South Africa’s chances this Saturday. But it has since emerged that coach Jake White has been forced to select an under-strength side for the match in Christchurch for political reasons.
The last time a Blue Bulls lock forward was sent home from a tour on trumped up medical charges was in 1994. Kitch Christie had warned Drikkus Hattingh to change his attitude on the field or face the consequences. Subsequently Hattingh was a member of the team that lost a midweek game against Scotland A in Melrose and 24 hours later Christie told him to pack his bags and head for the airport.
The matter would have been successfully hushed up were it not for the fact that the balding lock was a) recognisable from a distance and b) needed to walk past the bar to get to a waiting taxi. Members of the fourth estate ensconced therein saw him, bearded him and learned the truth. There was no injury. Or not a physical one, at least.
This time around Victor Matfield, a rather more gifted Bulls lock than Hattingh, has been dispensed of. Sent home from Australia for an urgent knee operation, Matfield is in such discomfort that he will play for the Bulls in the Currie Cup on Saturday.
The jury is still out on Matfield’s true worth in Test rugby, but it is fair to say that on the one good leg that the Springbok doctor, Yusuf Hassan, insists he has, he is a better man to take on the All Blacks than his replacement, Van den Berg. The latter has been rushed with unseemly haste to New Zealand and thrust straight into the team in a jet-lag-defying move.
This despite the fact that Sarfu admitted on Tuesday that Matfield was in glowing health and, ‘because the player remains a member of the Springbok squad they have first call on his services given that he is fit to playâ€.
It has been alleged that the real reason for Matfield’s premature return home is because he is taking Sarfu to court on a contractual issue, but this can’t be right. No administration would deliberately allow an under-strength team to be selected on such a flimsy basis. Would it?
The All Blacks will be laughing at such nonsense. They had reason to fear the Springboks, rejuvenated as they have been by the coaching of White. They were wondering how on earth they would get enough decent ball to their exceptional backs to win the game, given the predictable superiority of their opponents in set-piece play.
Now they know that the Boks will be about as focused as 15 Mr Magoos and that victory will arrive with the inevitability of a tax bill in the post. Unless, of course, there is a miracle.