Aussies get the early vote

The word has been used so much in the early stages of the World Cup that they are soon going to be referring to it as "the big C". No, it is not cancer, commitment or the Comrades we are talking about, but clinical.

Faced with a slew of first round games where the results, and even the width of the winning margins, were a foregone conclusion, what most critics looked for from the more favoured teams, which have come to be known as "the haves", was a clinical performance in burying "the have-nots".

A clinical performance can roughly be defined as one that is carried out with precision and with a minimum of fuss and panic. For instance, South Africa's error-ridden wins over Spain and Uruguay in the 1999 World Cup were definitely not clinical performances, whereas Saturday's annihilation of the same Uruguay team certainly had elements of it.

While our knowledge of the weakness of the opposition should temper any inclination towards euphoria, you could not have asked for more from the Springboks than they delivered. Most of the 12 tries they scored were good ones and mistakes were minimised.

Ultimately you can only play against the opposition that confront you on the day and at least this time the Boks were not guilty of being dragged down to the level of the opposition.

Just what it means with regards to next week's long awaited big clash with England is difficult to work out, however, and it is the area where the Boks were not so convincing that might have been most instructive to coach Rudolf Straeuli. By this we refer to the scrumming, which would definitely not have sent any shivers of apprehension down the spines of the English.

So the Boks have a lot of work to do this week in the scrums, and after the Perth performance the management can feel a little happier about choosing Jacque Fourie as an outside centre. The real acid test for Fourie will come on Saturday though, for Rassie Erasmus is right in saying that the amount of space he is allowed will be very different when he comes across the white wall of the English defence.

The big win over Uruguay also showed glimpses of something that many critics had sensed for a while, namely that the best Bok loose trio might be one that fields Joe van Niekerk in the No6 jersey. It is a pity skipper Corne Krige did not play in the game, for on the evidence of the warmup matches he is the one player that does require game time.

But while there were a few things for us to comment on and think about, the reality is that the World Cup only really starts for the South Africans this coming weekend, as it does for England, who were even more clinical in their decimation of the real unknowns of the tournament, Georgia.

The Georgians did put in a fair old effort in the early minutes, and it was to England's credit that they managed to keep moving their big opponents around with some slick passing that in the wet conditions almost bordered on the sublime. England showed all their usual class, Jonny Wilkinson was probably the best place-kicker of the first round, and it will take something special for South Africa, and anyone else for that matter, to beat them.

All the other top ranked teams delivered the required clinical performance needed against the minnows, with the exception perhaps of Ireland, who battled a little bit too much for their own comfort in the match against Romania.

France, often so poor against weaker opposition, were to me one of the more impressive teams on show and some of the aspects of their game against Fiji were a big improvement on the rusty performances delivered earlier in the year. The champions of Europe in 2002, are the Tricolores going to peak at the World Cup?

New Zealand scarcely raised a sweat in their massive 70-7 win over Italy. The Italians had left some of their top players out but it did not detract from the All Black performance, which was only marred by some first half handling errors, a poor goalkicking effort from Carlos Spencer and the injury which may have ended Tana Umaga's tournament.

Both those last mentioned things could prove hugely problematic to New Zealand when the real tournament (quarterfinal round) begins in a few weeks time and the number of Kiwis reduced to a limp would also have been worrying to All Black coach John Mitchell.

Let's just hope that by the time the big matches arrive the top teams are not too weakened by injuries. Former Natal and Bok coach Ian McIntosh may have had a point when he referred on a Supersport rugby chat show the other night to the matches against weaker teams as a "nuisance factor".

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Italian defeat was that they lost by almost exactly the same score as they did in the opening match against the All Blacks in 1987.

This tended to confirm my view that very few of the smaller nations have really made much of an improvement in the last few years. For instance, the Canadian team that lost to Wales was infinitely weaker than the one that made waves at the 1991 World Cup and I have a hunch that by the end of this tournament we will be saying the same about the current team of Samoans.

Argentina, by far the most successful of the so-called developing rugby nations in the past few years, were a disappointment in their match against Australia. Indeed, from an asthetic viewpoint, the entire opening match was a disappointment and certainly did not live up to the big game between the Aussies and the Boks which opened the 1995 tournament.

But then it is also true that when the Aussies are in their most clinical mood they are seldom a joy to watch, and this may have been what happened on Friday. The Wallabies know where the Puma strengths lie, and in typical Aussie fashion they proved clever enough to play away from those strengths.

Considering they were up against one of the more formidable packs at the tournament, Eddie Jones would have been right to be heartened by the performance of the big men. And the way the Wallabies shut down Argentina in other areas, including the lineouts, was highly efficient.

As this was the only really competitive game between teams of almost similar strength, it is arguable that the hosts may have ended the first weekend with the most to crow about.

This is not because they entertained the crowd, which they perhaps didn't, but because they showed signs of an efficiency which was the hallmark of the team that won the tournament back in 1999.

There was a lot of running rugby on the opening weekend, but then this was to be expected given the huge chasm which existed between the quality, and wealth, of the teams involved. It will only be later on that we start picking up the trends of the tournament and whether those who say defence and kicking will reign supreme have a point or not.

So far though it was the Aussies, particularly impressive in the first half, who sounded the early warning. They were clinical to the point of being boring, but they also had those two E words that have been a less obvious but nonetheless important reason for Australian sporting success - efficiency and effectiveness.