Being world champions at last

The weather is dark and gloomy in Durban ahead of departure for Cape Town, but the Springbok mood will be as positive and upbeat as it was when the sun shone on this city earlier in the week.

That No1 world ranking became a lot more secure with their 31-19 win in the second test, and the emphatic way they suffocated the New Zealanders drummed out the message that they are the best team by some distance.

It is quite bizarre how wrong the All Blacks appear to be getting it when it comes to strategy. To some extent they are right when they contend that without a forward platform it may force them to be adventurous, but it does not justify running the ball from behind your own try-line.

All Black Graham Henry spoke about how at international level coaching is all about thinking on the hoof. There are times when I think it is something he is not particularly good at.

In 2008 there was a substantial readjustment in the All Black strategy between their match in Sydney and the one back on New Zealand soil a week later. The All Black coaches even went as far as to admit they had got it wrong, and they admitted that they had misread the type of rugby that needed to be played under the ELVs.

The All Blacks shifted from the attack from everywhere approach that failed so dismally in Sydney to a more territory orientated game that saw them win by an even bigger score than they had lost by the previous week.

Now they have gone back to run from everywhere. Why? The All Blacks clearly have massive respect for the Bok lineout, which does explain why they would rather not kick to touch.

But the Bok lineout was there last year, so what is different this time? There are two things, the first relates to the All Blacks and the second to the Boks.

For the All Blacks, the big difference is that they started this Tri-Nations season without that master tactician and gifted kicker Dan Carter. The All Blacks appear to have been panicked in his absence into thinking that they have to find another way to play after relying so heavily on him in the second half of the last Tri-Nations.

The shift back to the old laws might also have flummoxed Henry and his assistants. The reintroduction of the long arm penalty, for instance, has not made the territory game any less important than it was under the ELVs. On the contrary, it has made it even more important.

We are shown that when a kicker lands eight penalties, and it would have been a similar story in Bloemfontein had Ruan Pienaar had his goalkicking boots on. It was a similar story in the Lions series – much of the ebb and flow revolved around important kicks being landed to punish mistakes made in the wrong part of the field.

Where the Boks have turned it around is that they have figured it out. In fact, they did it long ago, last August to be precise, for that was when they switched from the loose rugby that was their way when the new coach first took over. They celebrated their return to a direct approach by beating Australia 53-8.

Somewhere in my column archives there is a piece I wrote after that game about how the Boks were the best in the world when they played the game that they were comfortable with and preferred.

In the 12 months since then they have more than vindicated that view, with only one defeat, and that in a dead rubber test when the selections were poor, reflected on their record. Included among the victims are the Lions (twice), New Zealand (twice) and England (by a record score).

The recipe for the turn-around from last year’s wooden spoon position in the Tri-Nations has been a simple one. As Mils Muliaina put it after the Durban test, there is nothing new about the Bok game, they are playing the same way as they did five years ago.

But it is different from this time last year, and it explains why the results are so different. The Boks are the best in the world when they stick to doing what they do well, and while there is room for improvement in what they do with the ball when they have it, I can’t see many teams beating them when they are following their current suffocation approach.

It has enabled the Boks to go back to No1 spot, and at last they are doing what colleague Dan Retief once referred to as “being world champions”, something they failed to do post-1995 and last year. Now all we need is for England to hold on in the Ashes and we should reach August with both the national cricket teams and rugby teams officially at the top of the world.