Is 160 minutes enough?

Only the Springboks will know how relevant the result of the Tri-Nations the match in Durban was to their build-up to the World Cup.

If they took the bleak view of many critics, and allowed the defeat to be a massive blow to their confidence, it might well have been a mortal blow to their chances of retaining the trophy. If, however, they weighed the disappointment of defeat up with the knowledge that for most of them it was their first international match of the season, and for some of them the first game they have played at any level for ages, then the impact needn’t be so dramatic.

Sport is a funny thing, and sometimes it’s only the combatants themselves who really know how much something means to the psyche. There were a lot of people who predicted the Boks would win in Durban, including this one. But the realistic view was that the Australians would have a good chance of winning given the fact they were playing against a team that in a playing sense was so underdone.

I wrote in my preview that we shouldn’t be surprised if the Boks “run out of puff after 60 minutes”, so when they were only 6-0 up after a dominant first half, for me the writing was on the wall.

So how are the Springboks themselves feeling about the loss? I am not so sure they see it as a massive train-smash. In the build-up week some of them gave the impression they thought going straight into the international season with a match against Australia was a heck of an ask and that some teething problems might be encountered first up.

At the end of the first half, although they didn’t have enough points to win, my sense was that they had exceeded expectations. And I didn’t allow the fact they didn’t get across the line to obscure that view. In a World Cup year the process comes before the result and what is to come is way more important than what is happening now.

Having said that, there are reasons for concern, not the least of those concerns being the lack of playing time left to get the team purring again before the real deal of the World Cup starts. While Jake White also rested his top players for the away leg of the Tri-Nations in the build-up to 2007, his top team did play together a lot more in the preparation phase than this one will.

To refresh memories, the 2007 Boks played and thumped England twice before mixing and matching combinations against Samoa before the Tri-Nations had even started. By the time the away leg arrived and the under-strength squad went on tour, the Boks had already played five times.

More importantly, they got to play three more warm-up games (two for the first choice team, one for the dirt-trackers) just before the World Cup, with the win over Scotland in Edinburgh being a big confidence builder.

The reason the Boks aren’t playing any warm-up games this year is because there just isn’t enough time. In 2007 the Super 14 season ended in May, the incoming tour matches were played in June, and the Tri-Nations was done and dusted by the second half of July.

Thanks to SANZAR’s questionable decision to coincide their extension of the Super season with a World Cup year, the final preparation phase for this World Cup has been concertinaed due to the Super Rugby final only being played in the second week of July.

This season the Springbok Tri-Nations campaign is being concluded less than two weeks from departure for the World Cup. It means that all the pre-tournament onfield fine-tuning has to be done in the Tri-Nations. It also effectively means that the Boks, in deciding to rest the key players for the away leg, have given themselves just 160 minutes to complete their match preparation. Is that enough?

If the Boks do the expected by beating Wales in their World Cup opener, it could be, as they will then have an opportunity to build their form before the knockouts arrive. The knockout phase is when you need to peak at a World Cup. But the Boks need to use the 80 minutes that remain of this Tri-Nations to get to a place where they are not vulnerable to the Welsh and, for that matter, Samoa.