No Bloemfontein ambush this time

We have to allow Springbok coaches a little leeway when it comes to holding them to statements they may have made several months ago. When Jake White said upon his appointment to the national job that he couldn't believe people were doubting whether South Africa would beat Ireland, it was after all still the cricket season.

He is singing a very different tune now that the reality of the Irish challenge is just a couple of days away. He has been in the job now for a few months, he has experienced first hand over the past few weeks the bad luck which can scupper the best laid plans of any international coach.

The Springbok team that faces Ireland at Newlands looks very different from the one that he would have had in mind when he named his 22-man squad last month. If you go back to a week before the announcement, when Butch James would have been first choice flyhalf, you realise just how much his plans have changed, with Marius Joubert and Fourie du Preez the only survivors in the backline.

That is not an ideal scenario in the buildup to a test against an Irish team that are the reigning Triple Crown champions (Coming to think of it, that is something else that White would not have known about back in the cricket season when he made his pronouncements, for the Six Nations had scarcely gathered momentum).

So there are good reasons why White, although he still reckons this Irish team would get beaten by the Brumbies, should install the visitors as favourites. They are a form team and they have the advantage of having played together not that long ago, whereas the Boks are another new combination which still has to find its feet.

Yet in many ways all of this gives White an advantage over previous Bok coaches who have started the season against an unknown quantity and then been roasted by the critics when the national side has not delivered the anticipated victory. Perhaps the best example of a Bok coach being treated a little too harshly was in this very city of Bloemfontein almost four years ago to the day.

The Boks under Nick Mallett arrived to play against an England team that they had just scraped home against, thanks in no small part to a controversial TMO call from Mark Lawrence, in Pretoria a week earlier. Everyone South African was expecting the Boks this time to confirm their superiority over the English and score the emphatic win that playing in a place like Bloemfontein, where the air is so dry, the altitude such a factor and the ground so hard, should have demanded.

Instead it was England who scored the big win. Although there was only one score in the final England winning margin, no-one who was at the then Free State Stadium that day would have denied that England should have won by a lot more. Jonny Wilkinson was magnificent and he played behind a pack that treated the Bok big men like schoolboys.

Predictably, there was a fierce backlash from not only the rugby media, but also the fans. I well remember stopping in Colesberg or one of those Karoo towns on the drive back to Cape Town and listening to the many people in a coffee shop ranting about "That fool Mallett" and the many changes that should be made to the national side's playing personnel and management.

It is easy for me to remember it now because I stumbled the other day across a column I wrote on it for The Argus. Reading it was quite illuminating, for unlike most other critics, my line was that we should not judge Mallett too harshly as the strength of the England team should not be underestimated. I even went on to predict that "England may well win the next World Cup", something that I wish I had recalled last November, when Martin Johnson's team did pull it off.

Looking back now, with a 53-3 defeat at Twickenham just one of many big defeats suffered by the Boks against England since then, it appears I was right to charge the South African rugby public with overreaction. The defeat in Bloem was in fact the last time the Boks did come within seven points of England, who have gone on to show that they deserved immense respect even back in 2000, which was when their march to World Cup glory really began.

There was a similar instance of everyone turning a troubling situation into a major crisis a year later. Harry Viljoen, who replaced Mallett as coach, started the year with a series against a French team which appeared severely depleted and understrength. So when the Boks lost at Ellis Park it was a disaster, and a five point win in Durban a week later was seen as ineffective revenge.

Back then Viljoen may just have had a semblence of a plan. There may have been some method in his apparent madness. But because of that Ellis Park defeat, the knives were out, the pressure was piled on him and plans started to change (Andre Vos dropped as captain for Bob Skinstad, etc). Little did we know then that most of the French team that had won in Johannesburg was to go on to convincingly claim the Five Nations and Grand Slam later in the year, effectively making them the kings of the northern hemisphere.

Had we known that, we may have reacted a little less harshly. Maybe the Boks would have been better prepared if they had known exactly what they were up against, instead of the unknown quantity that the French were at the outset.

This is why White may be better off than some of his predecessors. The Irish are not a team in the making, they are a proven combination with a sound record. They do have a reputation for bombing out on end of season tours, but this time it appears they are ready for the challenge and eager to confirm their current world ranking.

White, who appears understandably tense and nervous, at least has the consolation of knowing that defeat this time, although unacceptable to many, would not be completely unexpected. And maybe we, the rugby public and media, have been desentisized enough by South Africa's rugby failures to this time resist the temptation to throw the baby out with the bath water.