Don’t forget the praying mantis

After a week away from rugby I returned to “civilisation” on Sunday wondering if the television images broadcast from New Zealand and Australia over the previous two Saturdays had perhaps been an illusion.

Certainly the way the two defeats were greeted in the newspapers I read it was possible to imagine that maybe the Springboks had won their two overseas Tri-Nations matches. The consensus seemed to be that the Bok “C” team had pushed both Australia and New Zealand and that this meant the South Africans are well on track for the World Cup.

That I saw it slightly differently may have quite a bit to do with expectation. Those who were excited about the Bok performances appeared to have started out with the anticipation that the South Africans would get smashed by 50 points in each game.

This though was never realistic, for as Bok coach Jake White said at the outset, there was plenty of international experience in the squad. The biggest obstacle was always going to be the fact that, unlike White’s first choice side, these players had never played together as a combination. Those who have read or listened to White’s theories about the importance of continuity should not need to be reminded how significant a factor this is.

But talent there is aplenty, and it was not only the Bok first choice players who would have been boosted by the improved showings in the Super 14. In short, the Bok second or third stringers were always going to be relatively competitive, and in the end, the Boks did no more or no less than what we should have expected.

They were competitive for most of the way in both games. In neither of them though, unless the television images I saw were a fake, did the South Africans ever threaten to actually win the game, and after the first quarter of the Sydney test, they never looked like scoring another try, and for most of the way they appeared to be scrambling.

Indeed, after the initial 17 point spurt against the Wallabies, they only scored another six points, through two penalties, in the next 140 minutes of rugby. In that time, they conceded 58 points – a tally which takes the contest into the same realm as the recent series between the first choice Boks and an under-strength England.

And this is the point. The Boks did everything that should have been expected of them, and White was right to rest his frontliners, but let’s be realistic: the last two matches taught us nothing when it comes to the chances of lowering New Zealand colours at the World Cup.

Certainly no more than the England tour told us about the respective nations’ chances in the important World Cup pool game in Paris in just under nine weeks. South Africans were happy to celebrate the various records picked up in that series, and it didn't matter that the only certain first choice England player in the touring team was Jonny Wilkinson.

Much was said about psychological blows, but in retrospect the 50 point defeats suffered by England in Bloemfontein and Pretoria may be no more of a psychological blow than the 33-6 defeat suffered by the Boks in Christchurch.

The talk from Wilkinson after that series was similar to what came out of the Bok camp now, with the England captain saying he was returning to England convinced that the full-strength team could beat the Boks.

The bottom line is that everything in this World Cup year is a bit obscured, and we don’t really know anything with any certainty. Even the full-strength clash between the All Blacks and Boks in Durban was obscured by the travelling the Kiwis did in the week building up, as well as the absence through injury of Bok captain John Smit.

What should be of concern is that there is too much talk of the Kiwis and what the Boks might do to them in a World Cup final. Before that comes a match against the World Cup champions, and if the man with the praying-mantis kicking style has a core of experienced veterans around him, England might be a much bigger obstacle than we anticipate.