Back to work for SA - and Boks

The final day of the Fifa World Cup felt like the last day of a really enjoyable holiday. The enjoyment is still there, you want to make every last second count for something, but you also know that what you are feasting on you are feasting on for the last time and that the following day it will all be over.

The Monday after the World Cup final was a bit like the day after a really excellent and absorbing cricket test match. You’ve been completely enthralled for five days, it all built up to a thrilling climax, but now somehow you feel bereft. How are you going to fill up the empty time that is suddenly available?

For many the answer to that question will probably be that we go back to work and start concentrating on the labour that pays us. In the instance of us sports scribes I suppose it should mean we start concentrating again on rugby issues and really start being interested in it again rather than just pretending to be.

The test matches against teams like Italy just seemed so inconsequential in comparison to the World Cup, and maybe the Springboks felt it too, for what I did pick up in those early season tests was a sloppiness and maybe even a sense of complacency that I felt might just come back to bite them when the big games arrived.

The win over France, the only really complete performance in the incoming tour phase, didn't help either as Argentina’s big win over the same opponents brought a different perspective.

It was why I wasn’t prepared to make a prediction in the preview for the Auckland test -- with the dominance South Africa enjoyed in the Super 14, the Springboks really shouldn’t be losing to the All Blacks, but a Bok team not properly focused or selected certainly can.

Jean de Villiers is the best inside centre in the world, so he should play there, and the Boks would not have won the Tri-Nations last year without Frans Steyn. Leaving him out is a mistake, particularly at this time when the Boks are missing through injury the vast distances that can be gained by Fourie du Preez’s field kicking boot.

Du Preez’s decision making is being missed too, and probably also his leadership in the current player driven system. When he is present his contribution off the field is as valuable as that of John Smit and Victor Matfield.

But those players may not have made much difference this time around. The All Blacks just looked so angry and determined, and for the first time since their 19-0 win at Newlands in 2008 they got it right tactically against the Boks.

They did keep the ball in hand in Auckland, but it wasn’t the panicky, willy-nilly running that they produced in last year’s Tri-Nations, perhaps because they got their primary objective right, which was to win the collisions and smash the Boks at the breakdowns.

That should be a concern for the South Africans, for there is a pattern starting to emerge if you care to look, one that draws off a line that goes “if you can front up to the Boks physically they can easily be beaten”. Australia showed the way in Brisbane last year, France followed them in Toulouse a few months later, and so to some extent did Ireland.

The Boks were the best team in the world last year, but I have always felt that to stay consistently the best, the Boks might need to be more cerebral in coaching and tactics. This is necessary if they want to stay ahead on those occasions the opposition do bring the necessary brawn and physicality to their game.

Auckland was just the first stop in this year’s Tri-Nations, and coach Peter de Villiers and skipper John Smit are on the money when they say this is not a time to panic. The Boks will almost certainly be better in Wellington, and now that they have shaken the monkey from their back, New Zealand might struggle to summon up the same intensity.

Don’t bet your house against a complete role reversal in Wellington -- it has happened before, and all it might require is for the Boks to get into the game physically in the early stages.

With the 2011 World Cup in mind, however, it would be negligent of those involved in plotting the way forward for the Boks to fail to take into cognisance the reality that when the Boks do get beaten these days, they usually get beaten convincingly in games where they appear to have no answer to opponents who front them or even dominate them physically.

Four tries to nil at Eden Park was a thrashing in anyone’s book, and so was the win that Australia scored in Brisbane last August. Coming to think of it, the game that might best illustrate the point was the last test against the British and Irish Lions, where at Coca-Cola Park of all places the Boks were smashed physically and beaten by what against those opponents was a record score.

In all those games there was an element of the Boks being beaten at their own game and of being unable to come up with any answers when the opposition didn’t cow from the physical confrontation.