Wise counsel has prevailed and the Springboks will play their first Test match of the year with just about the strongest available 15 players. That means that coach Peter de Villiers has been talked out of playing JP Pietersen at fullback and replacing the injured Schalk Burger with Danie Rossouw.
It may be that he gave way on those two selections in order to have Ruan Pienaar at flyhalf. De Villiers has gone a long way down the road of declaring Pienaar his preferred choice at pivot, taking him to Europe at the end of last season and giving him the responsibility both of executing the game plan and of kicking goals.
It is hard luck for Morne Steyn of the Bulls, but the young man gets to watch the action from the bench and he may yet have a major role to play in the series against the British and Irish Lions that begins in Durban on Saturday.
For their part, the Lions are unbeaten in five provincial games and will field a team that has been mixed and matched immeasurably better than some of its predecessors. The Lions management will perhaps wish they had faced sterner opposition in the republic prior to the Test, but to balance that, the majority of the Springbok team will not have played a significant game for six weeks.
If the worst fears of Bok management are realised and the team loses on Saturday, then the whole idea of wrapping the nation’s elite rugby players in cotton wool so long before a significant series will come into question. If, however, the well rested and injury free home side plays to its potential it will be a dark day for the Lions.
The tourists have flattered only to deceive. A 10-try display against the Gauteng Lions two weeks ago seemed to signal a significant threat. The midfield running of Jamie Roberts and Brian O’Driscoll suggested the tourists were capable of playing a powerful brand of direct rugby. But subsequent games have shattered that illusion.
Put simply, the Lions have shown little capacity for turning pressure into points. Against the Cheetahs, Sharks and Western Province the Lions dominated possession and territory, yet they won by a single score against two of those opponents, and struggled for 40 minutes against a Sharks outfit that did little more than tackle.
The two principle flyhalves, Ronan O’Gara and Stephen Jones, have been presented with vast amounts of quality ball, but have failed to kill off opponents. The Lions have looked at their best when scrumhalf Mike Philips has attacked around the fringes or linked with his forwards. Out wide the genius of Brian O’Driscoll has camouflaged a workaday three-quarter line.
It is here that the Springboks have a clear advantage, as long as no one in the medical staff has been complicit in covering up injuries. A case in point is Adi Jacobs. The Sharks’ centre has been carrying a shoulder injury since the middle of the Super 14 and some experts have advised an operation. Yet he starts on Saturday ahead of Jaque Fourie, who has had a prodigious season in a losing team.
De Villiers has his favourites and a laudable desire to stay away from tampering with a winning team, no matter how long ago that team last played.
Hence the fact that he has given Pienaar the number 10 jersey ahead of the in-form Morne Steyn. Hence the fact, too, that he waited until almost the last minute before deciding that Schalk Burger would not be fit for the first Test.
This Springbok team may be rusty, but it will not fail due to unfamiliarity among the players. The core of this squad won the World Cup and the inspirational captain, John Smit, has made a fist of converting to tight head prop late in his career.
If the Lions are to win their brains will have had to work out some clever ploys. The defence coach, Shaun Edwards, may turn out to be the key man.
He has got the players singing from the same hymn sheet in a short space of time, but defence is all about trust and confidence. Miss a few tackles and the whole edifice comes crumbling down.
It may be unduly negative to suggest that the series will be about the Lions’ defence and the Springboks’ attack, but that’s the way it played out in 1997. The Lions stayed in games thanks to the reliability of their placekicking and the pressure exerted by their forwards. The Springboks lost the series because they aspired to rise above such pedestrian fare.
There is a big difference between now and then.
Carel du Plessis had just assumed the coaching reins and did not have time to build a squad that bought into his concepts. The class of 2009 have got to know De Villiers and come to forgive his malapropisms over the past year. The squad is full of leaders in addition to Smit, such as Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers, and they should simply have too much class to lose.