Boks must sort out the spoilers

The Springbok planning stage for the Tri-Nations came to what can only be described as a merciful end with the lacklustre and completely forgettable win scored by South Africa A in Windhoek at the weekend.

It was a game in keeping with what we had seen from the other four (three Springbok tests and one other SA A match) and should have left Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli with far more questions than answers.

As a whole, the past four weeks have done nothing to alleviate the pessimism currently engulfing South African rugby and the outlook looks even more bleak now than it did when three of our sides found themselves among the last four on the final Super 12 log.

South Africa A won 25-9, but attempts to search for positives afterwards were made to look ridiculous alongside the latest odds being offered by bookmakers, who have Namibia's chances of winning the World Cup at 6000 to one.

I tended to agree with the pre-match observation of Supersport commentator Hannes Strydom, who, noting Namibia's recent history, said something to the effect that if South Africa A were not 50 or 60 points up at halftime they might as well pack up and go home.

Of course, Sod's Law and my experience of South African rugby suggests that the Boks will turn everything on its head this weekend. Games against the top Tri-Nations teams, at least the home ones, do tend to raise the Springbok performance bar a bit and there is no reason why it should be any different over the next few weeks.

The Boks will start as underdogs both at Newlands against the Wallabies and a week later in Pretoria against the All Blacks and for some reason that always seems to make some difference when they are playing at home.

But regardless of what the Boks do over the next few weeks, the Springbok tendency to allow themselves to be dragged down to the level of the opposition, which is what I believe has happened over the past month, should nonetheless remain disturbing and must be addressed before the World Cup.

If the Windhoek game did anything for South African rugby, it was surely to sound out a reminder of just how vulnerable local teams become when foreign sides employ an effective spoiling game against them.

The inability of the South African A players to overcome their discomfort at having Namibians in their face all afternoon was alarming and reminiscent of the mediocre Bok efforts against lowly Uruguay and Spain at the last World Cup.

We had seen shades of this the previous week when the Boks played the Pumas in Port Elizabeth and even more so when the Pumas faced South Africa A in Wellington a few days before that.

Fortunately for the South Africa A side that played in Windhoek, the Namibians did not have the effective runners that the Pumas possessed so they were less vulnerable to the counter-attack, which enabled them to escape with the win. But even the Namibians were too often for comfort allowed to slip through non-existent South African A defenders.

Why all this concerns me is because while everyone following the Boks seems completely pre-occupied with the pool game against England on October 18, there is one other match which could just potentially become problematic if the Boks don't find a way to counter teams intent on a spoiling approach.

It is the match set for Sydney on November 1 against Samoa, a team which has in the past proved adept at any game which demands hard tackling and upsetting of the rythmn of the opposition.

Yes, I can hear the chorus of voices pointing out that the Samoans only just scraped home against the Lions this past weekend and were beaten by the Free State Cheetahs the week before. The Boks hammered the Samoans when they met in Pretoria last year and we should rightfully expect the South Africans to win the World Cup pool match comfortably.

But then isn't that what we have been saying at the start of every match that either the Springboks or the South African A team have played this season, and for that matter in the week building up to the Bok clash with Scotland in Edinburgh last November.

Somehow even the most mediocre of teams can get under the Bok skin (example Spain, Uruguay) if they manage to perfect the spoiling game and the Samoans will have plenty of motivation in Sydney as they go out to emulate their impressive performances in the past few World Cups.

Not that for one moment am I suggesting the Samoans can only play spoiling rugby. As they showed in scoring a very good deciding try as they came back at the death to beat the Lions at Ellis Park, they also have that ability to make something happen out of nothing and if memory serves me correctly they ran the length of the field to score a try against the Boks at Loftus last year.

Laugh if you must, but I really do believe that the Boks, as well as finding a way to live with England, need to devise some way of coping with inferior teams who realise their best chance of victory is to close up space, get between the Bok forwards and tackle their guts out.

The Bok vulnerability to this sort of approach is by no means a new phenomenon, and apart from the 1999 World Cup games already mentioned, it will be recalled that Francois Pienaar's 1995 Boks (captained on the day by Adriaan Richter) made heavy weather of their pool matches against Romania and Canada.

On both occasions they were able to survive and claim the points to advance to the next round, but the modern Boks should not just take it for granted that they will get through in the end. If they continue to live a charmed existence, sooner or later their luck may just run out.

If Namibia can hold a South African A side that included just three players not previously capped for the Boks and Argentina, who had just flown into the country that very week, can push them at home, then Samoa can run them close on neutral territory. Remember, they will not have to overcome any altitude disadvantage in Australia.

And although not many would disagree that the referee did play a part in narrowing the gap between the sides in Windhoek, the Boks should know enough about that aspect of the game to realise that they cannot bet against a repeat performance from whoever takes the whistle in their last World Cup pool match.