Boks did us proud

The Springboks return to South Africa this week facing the probability that they will relinquish their Tri-Nations title at the end of it, but they should feel that they have reached their stated goal of making further progress since the promising start to the Jake White era in 2004.

While last year they clinched the silverware, and this year they might go without, they did take it a step further this season by winning three games as against the two home victories that were enough to see them to southern hemisphere supremacy 12 months ago.

Even if the All Blacks do what is expected of them in Auckland on Saturday, coach White should feel that his team have met every objective. Apart from the three Tri-Nations wins, they also won against Australia in Johannesburg, making it four wins against members of the big three of the south.

Included in those wins were three against Australia against the one solitary defeat in the Mandela Challenge game in Sydney at the start of July. That effectively means that if we were talking about a series, the Boks would have won the series against Australia 3-1 – no mean achievement.

They also managed back to back wins over New Zealand, something that has not been managed since the team headed by Gary Teichmann and Nick Mallett won every game in the 1998 Tri-Nations.

And the series victory over France which preceded the matches against the Tri-Nations teams was more notable than perhaps White was given credit for if you consider that series wins over France on home soil have not exactly been plentiful in the post-isolation era.

A record of nine starts, six wins, two defeats and a draw may not sound that remarkable until you take a closer look at who the Boks played during the southern hemisphere season.

Uruguay was the only easy game, it was the only gentle warmup in a year where the Boks were always going to be under pressure thanks to a schedule quite a bit more difficult than the one they faced last season.

Remember too that the Boks were not the unknown quantity that they were when they won the Tri-Nations. Australia and New Zealand have had a year to get used to the Boks being a top power again, they have had 12 months to plot ways to get around the rush defence and other ploys that White has devised to make his team competitive.

The All Blacks did find a way around it on Saturday, when they successfully probed channels much closer to the forwards and appeared to take the Boks by surprise with their refusal to simply run the ball wide as they did in Cape Town. But the Boks came back well in the second half to prove that Graham Henry and his team do still have some way to go before they can justifiably say they have unlocked the key.

Not that it should really be much of a secret. In the opening period much of the All Black success was thanks to their being much more physical than they had been in Cape Town at the recycles and points of contact. If you put the Bok scrum under pressure, thus robbing them of forward momentum and forcing the loose-forwards to commit themselves long, you also take a step in the right direction.

But the Boks are not the only team on the planet at the moment who rely heavily on defence and on forward physicality. Neither are they the first, for it was one of the keys to the England success at the 2003 World Cup in Australia.

Naas Botha was 100% correct when he remarked after Saturday’s game that the attacking flair and creativity is something that the Boks can still work on. For now it is important that the Boks just start winning again, establish a winning habit, and they have certainly done that.

It is still a young team, there are still a lot of rough edges. For all his good work hassling the opposition and intercepting balls, Enrico Januarie knocks on too many balls around the fringes, which robs the Boks of momentum, and some of his passing on Saturday was not up to scratch. And I am still not entirely convinced about Andre Pretorius when it comes to away test matches.

It was also sad that White had to move Jean de Villiers from centre in order to cover for a lack of depth on the wing. The sooner the Boks find a genuine specialist right wing to back up Breyton Paulse, or maybe even replace him, so much the better for the future of this team.

Failing that, White is going to have to discover a creative centre in the De Villiers mould, for it was quite apparent, particularly in the second half in Dunedin, that the Boks were lacking something on attack when attack was necessary in the second half.

There are other little rough edges, but then you would anticipate this with a young team like the Boks are. It is a fact though that this young team has managed to take South Africa from No6 in the world to undisputed No2 in a very short period of time, and that White has managed this in a country which is continually wracked by upheaval in the rugby administration and which performed abysmally in the most recent Super 12 season.

Three of the South African teams ended that competition right near the bottom, with no overseas victory between them, with only the Bulls making the semis. Yet the Boks, who were not exactly a Bulls team in disguise either, were able to beat the other nations more often than they lost over the past few months. That is something for White to be proud of.