Play like champs, think like champs

It was during the weekend they played Fiji that the 2007 Springboks discovered that they wouldn’t need to play New Zealand or Australia to win the trophy. And it was in the weekend of the Fiji game that the 2011 vintage discovered that they will probably have to beat both just to make the final.

There are those who say the Boks have the beating of Australia. On the evidence just of this past weekend you would find it hard to argue with that theory, for the Springboks played like champions against Fiji and looked to be building momentum, while the Wallabies were woeful.

As someone reminded me, the expected quarterfinal will not be played in Brisbane, but in Wellington. And when Australia lost to Ireland, it sustained their recent history of failure on this side of the Tasman Sea.

But come on, Australia are Tri-Nations champions, so it has to be disquieting from a South African viewpoint that they are playing their southern rivals so early in the knockout stages. The only time the Boks and Aussies have met on neutral territory was at the 1999 World Cup, where the Wallabies won in extra-time at Twickenham.

That result pretty much sums up the quarterfinal – it will be close to a 50/50 game, which means both teams have a good chance of being on the plane home a full two weeks before the scheduled end of the tournament. The winner will then go on to play the All Blacks at Eden Park in Auckland in the semifinal, a venue where the visitor has to always be considered the rank under-dog.

Apart from the unthinkable, which is the Boks dropping their game to Samoa and thus not topping their group, there are two things that could change the above scenario and give the tournament only a second all southern hemisphere final in its history.

France could beat the All Blacks this coming weekend, and thus prevent the Kiwis from coming into the SA/Aussie side of the draw until the final. Or Italy could beat Ireland, thus putting Australia back into the frame to win Pool C, and the two fierce rivals will then avoid each other in the quarters. But I don't see that happening.

There are doubtless some Irish people who are wondering why I seem to see Australia as a much tougher quarterfinal obstacle when their team was so obviously better than the Wallabies this past weekend. Sorry guys, I just think you have played your final already, and the celebrations after the game suggested as much. If I was your lot I would tread very warily against Italy.

The Boks will deny that they wanted to avoid playing Australia in a quarterfinal, but then why was there such an effort put in to beat Wales and thus top the group?

But to be champions you have to beat the best, and you have to live with and overcome the card you are dealt. Maybe the Bok class of 2011 can help their own cause by embracing the challenge of trying to do what they didn’t have to do in 2007.

It was hardly their fault that both the Wallabies and All Blacks got knocked out in the quarterfinal stage four years ago, but the senior players will know only too well that winning the World Cup without playing those teams took a lot of the gloss off their achievement. This represents an opportunity to make amends for that and press home the point that they are the best team in the world.

Certainly any team that can beat Australia and New Zealand in successive weeks and then win a final a week after that has every right to be considered the best. No argument about that.

John Smit’s team has a chance to do that, and it is not such a long shot if you remember what they did in 2009, when they were significantly better than the other Tri-Nations sides. While Australia showed vulnerability this past weekend and New Zealand seem to be struggling with the pressure of being the host team, the South African players felt the old vibe starting to return.

They were probably going to have to beat New Zealand and Australia in successive weeks anyway, only the other way around, with the Wallabies their likely final opponents rather than quarterfinal. The only thing that is different is they are going to have to find their top form a bit quicker, something that fortunately started to happen against Fiji.

There were times in that game they played like the champions they are, and if they can adopt a champion mindset going into the knockouts, they could yet end this World Cup even more readily recognisable as the best team on the planet than they were in 2007.