Australia’s forwards have, it seems, thrown down the gauntlet. Coach Eddie Jones says there will be no backing down when the Wallabies meet the Springboks at the Telstra Stadium in Sydney on Saturday. So there.
Jones says he plans to fight fire with fire, forget about the verbals and get on with the job of neutralising a South African pack that, in the past couple of weeks, has emerged as among the most potent outfits on offer. Of course, the All Blacks are simply in another league, but we’ll worry about them later this month.
Australia under Jones has made a science of complementing near-inability with extreme capacity — and in some cases turning mules into racehorses. The much-maligned Bill Young is a case in point. The man isn’t particularly large or strong, as we’ve been told over and over again, but his technique has, over the course of a million internationals, been honed to a fine edge.
If you believe Gert Smal and Jake White, Young’s technique shares more with cheating than actually getting the fundamentals right, but this is exactly what makes him so effective. Laws governing forward play — particularly the scrums — are hopelessly inadequate and in many cases the referee’s decision is as much guesswork as anything else.
Young is more valuable to the Wallabies than a stronger, bigger prop simply because he is able to have opposing teams penalised off the park through a combination of trickery, smartness, experience and George Gregan.
Not all props are worth a guaranteed six points in match — Young is.
Should Smal and White succeed in getting referee Stuart Dickenson to see things their way, Young might not have as much leeway as usual, but you can be sure that he’ll deliver a three-pointer at least once in those 80 minutes.
Lawrence Sephaka is back at tighthead and will be Young’s opposite number. Sephaka was quite superb at loosehead against France in the Port Elizabeth Test — let’s hope that he can repeat the feat in Sydney against his wily opponent.
In fact, the Bok pack is just about the biggest, meanest and strongest assembled, containing the likes of Os du Randt, Jacques Cronje and Danie Rossouw — a frightening amount of meat. If the Bok forwards can get their tails up early and starve the Australian pack of possession, they will be in with more than a shout. The reverse is, unhappily, also true.
Gregan, Larkham, Giteau, Tuqiri, Turinui, Sailor and Rogers are all players of eye-watering quality. Larkham and Gregan on their own have won more matches than most backlines in international rugby combined, and their experience on Test level is monstrous.
Gregan, if you will remember, played in the 1995 World Cup opener — that’s a decade of top-flight rugger with nary in drop in form. Sailor, even though I think he’s a little overrated, is nonetheless wickedly quick and has incredible upper-body strength — crucial when you’re bursting through tackles at roughly 9m per second.
Jones has also called in Matt Rogers, he of great mullet, pace and dazzling footwork.
The Wallabies were unlucky to lose Stirling Mortlock at outside centre in the Test against France, but Morgan Turinui is no turkey — he’s quick, runs great space and is deadly when tying up the strings close to the line. Let’s hope that Marius Joubert’s feet remain on the ground and that his head hasn’t already swollen up to the proportions we know it can attain — you can’t afford to be looking at yourself on the stadium monitor when Turinui’s around.
Of course, the Boks have their own thoroughbreds stamping around in the stables. De Wet Barry will be hoping for a blinder against the heavily armoured Matt Giteau.
Giteau might be tiny and more padded than a gridiron linebacker, but anyone who’s seen him dismantle Super-12 teams at flyhalf will know that finding space is his bag. His choice in protective regalia certainly points to an astronaut fetish of some description.
If Stephen Larkham can set up the initial half-gap, Giteau will be moonwalking merrily through just waiting to hand off to Turinui, who in turn has the option of offloading to “The Mullet” quicksilvering in from fullback or just tossing it to Sailor for the formals.
But if that half-gap is suddenly filled with 90-odd kilograms of bloodthirsty Barry, well, then things might turn out a little differently. Barry will in all probability relieve Giteau of possession through a crackerjack tackle, flip it, say, inside to Jaco van der Westhuizen, who will, in turn find it in his heart to let Bryan Habana disprove Jones’s offside theory.
Come Saturday, there’ll be a sizable amount of talent tramping about the paddock and this, in itself, should be enough to make this first Mandela Cup meeting a right belter.
My money’s on the Boks, simply because they’re bigger and stronger up front — if they don’t fall apart like they did in the first Test against France. The backs are so evenly matched — possibly swaying to the advantage of Australia, even — that it’s really tough to call if one goes from the assumption that the forwards share the spoils evenly.
So again, it’s all down to the front eight doing their job with tenacity, physicality and aggression. If the Boks can get the Wallabies on the back foot, stick it in their faces and make life generally uncomfortable, there is no reason why they can’t strike an incredibly important psychological blow before the Tri-Nations starts in earnest.