It's starting to look rosy

With the number of days left until the kick-off to Rugby World Cup 2011 about to drop into double figures, the All Blacks are still the overwhelming favourites they have been for the best part of the past year – but the chances of a Springbok success are looking rosier than they were two months ago.

It is debatable how much attention you should pay to Super Rugby in the build-up to an event like the World Cup. In 2007 the Boks claimed they were able to ride the momentum of the Super 14 success of earlier that year, when the Bulls won an all-South African final against the Sharks in Durban. But in 2010 the Bulls and the Stormers contested the Super 14 final and the international season was a disaster.

It has to be a positive though for the Bok chances, that the doom and gloom that attended the poor form of senior Springboks while everyone waxed lyrical about the awesome ability of Sonny Bill Williams, is now being swept away.

Whether or not greater confidence in the chances of stopping SBW is justified will only really be made clear in October, which is when the deciding stages of the World Cup will be played. There has been a measure of success against him, and the Reds showed one way of negating his influence this past Sunday by just denying him front-foot ball.

My concern about Sonny Bill is that the teams that play New Zealand, and that means not just South Africa, may spend too much time worrying about him and not enough time concentrating on the other significant threats such as Dan Carter and Richie McCaw. After all, Sonny Bill wasn't part of the All Black mix when they won every game in the Tri-Nations in 2010.

But enough about Sonny Bill and the All Blacks. There is much sense in concentrating on your own game as a way to tackle rugby challenges, and in that sense South Africa is taking a step forward.

This past weekend saw a step forward in the South African chances of having three teams in the Super Rugby play-offs. And had the Cheetahs got their act together earlier, they might have been in contention now too.

The Lions beating the Highlanders off the last move at the House of Pain was the second time a South African team has pulled off a win like that against a top New Zealand side at a major Kiwi venue in the space of just over a week. The Stormers did it in Auckland eight days earlier.

The experienced Boks are suddenly starting to rediscover their momentum, and with it their old swagger has returned. No-one would suggest Victor Matfield was lacking for anything when the Bulls beat the Cheetahs at Loftus last weekend, and the Bulls were even more impressive before that against the Sharks.

The Sharks have lost all their games to top South African opponents this season, but they are still within touching distance of the top bracket, which must say something. And the Stormers have won 10 out of 13 games in the competition this season while often being less than satisfied with their performances.

But perhaps the biggest reason for optimism as the World Cup draws nearer goes beyond Super Rugby. The indications coming from around the Springbok management are that the group has taken on a new level of professionalism in their preparations, and the addition of Rassie Erasmus to the group is adding science to what used to be hit-and-miss planning.

Erasmus is a rugby genius who is also a workaholic, and his attention to detail and the technical aspects of the game brings to the Boks what was glaringly absent before. Provided the Boks can reintroduce the discipline to the group that was missing last year, Erasmus’s presence in the management as technical adviser will erase most of the shortfalls of the post-2007 era.

It’s difficult to quantify how much better off the Boks might be now than they were before, and a lot will depend on how prepared Peter de Villiers will be to ditch sentiment in making his final selections, but I would be far less inclined to bet against them than I would have been in March.