Boks sending out the wrong signal

Now I’ve heard it all. South Africa are playing mind games with the mighty Pumas in an effort to disrupt their preparation and put them off their game ahead of Sunday’s test at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires.

I was horrified when England “put it into” the Springboks at Loftus this year and no-one fought back, but this takes the cake.

South Africa are one of the world’s great powers. Argentina too. But in soccer. Not in rugby for goodness sake.

So now we decide not to name our test team because “it would enable Argentina to be more effective in targeting us.”

All I can say is that if the Pumas were wondering whether this time they might beat the Springboks they now know for sure that they can.

All Harry Viljoen has managed to do by delaying the naming of his first test team is send a signal to his antagonist, the vastly experienced Marcelo Loffreda, that the Boks are running scared of the Puma pack.

By concealing the true composition of his starting line-up he will certainly not have sent worry and concern rippling through the ranks of a might frontrow consisting of Maricio Reggiardo, Federico Mendez and Omar Hassan.

They will not be put off their stride looking for new tapes to study. They will not go to sleep worried about whether they might have to take on Willie Meyer or Robbie Kempson.

Their job was always just going to be to go out on the field and scrum the living daylights out of a Springbok pack that has been on a slippery slope for years now.

I sense the involvement of Andre Markgraaff and Ian McIntosh; both of whom in their previous careers delighted in obfuscating their team selections.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t - such as the test in Christchurch in 1996 when Markgraaff tried to get the All Blacks to believe he was going to start with Joost van der Westhuizen instead of Johan Roux.

In the end all he succeeded in doing was to upset the team chemistry with a grumpy Joost stalking around and the rest of the team not too sure of what tactics were being planned.

It did not upset the All Blacks at all who, in the words of then skipper Sean Fitzpatrick, announced that seeing as they were playing the Springboks they would approach the game with the necessary focus and not worry too much about the details.

What Viljoen has done is confirm to the Pumas that they do have an advantage at scrum time and that, in my experience, is not a very clever thing to do.