South Africa expects from Boks

Call it blind faith, call it wishful thinking or just plain fanatacism, but it appears there are many South Africans who are prepared to ignore the results of the past few years and tip the Springboks for World Cup glory.

While most of the world's rugby critics have written off the Boks as a factor at this World Cup, respondents to a poll conducted on Supersportzone appear convinced that this year's final will be a repeat of the 1995 one between the Boks and the All Blacks.

By early Thursday morning the Boks had over 42% of the vote, with the New Zealanders installed as second favourites with 38%. As an indication that people may be thinking with their hearts rather than their minds, England could only manage 15%, while Australia have recorded a lowly 3%.

Considering they are the host nation and played most of their buildup games understrength, the lowly ranking of Australia is surprising. Many South African experts, including Jake White and Joel Stransky, have tipped the Aussies to go all the way.

We will know more once they have played Argentina in tomorrow's World Cup opener, but it would be foolish to write off a team which was competitive against England in June and which also pushed the All Blacks all the way in the final Tri-Nations test.

Although they lost to South Africa in Cape Town in the opening Tri-Nations game and don't travel well to Africa, the Aussies are a different proposition at home. They know the conditions, which could be more than useful in this tournament which is being played at a time of year when the country should provide warm and humid weather.

They also have Stirling Mortlock back, or at least they will have once he has recovered from the gastro-entiritis which is keeping him out of the Argentina game. Mortlock is highly rated as a game-breaker by most of his opponents and his ability to fit anywhere into the backline will be a huge boost to the hosts.

If Australia's rating by readers is surprising, then England's is just laughable. Martin Johnson's men have grown into a formidable combination since the last World Cup and they have learned a lot of lessons since then.

They have been regarded as chokers in the past because of an apparent inability to close out the big games, but they have comprehensively rubbished that theory in the past few months.

England not only won their Six Nations decider against Ireland in Dublin, so proving they can win away, they annihilated a more than useful rugby nation with as powerful a rugby display as we have seen from any team in the past few years.

They then followed this up by beating the All Blacks in New Zealands and Australia in Australia, yet still have somehow fallen short of impressing southern hemisphere fans and critics, who now reckon they peaked too soon.

Well, that is not the impression they gave when their second team ran France close in a Marseilles venue which has been the grave-yard of many good sides over the past decade. Their first team then followed up by smashing the France second side in the return in London.

Make no mistake, England are very serious contenders for the World Cup trophy and if they remain injury free their is no reason they should not go all the way. Indeed, if form is any meaningful yardstick, there is no logical reason why the South Africans should even come close to challenging them in the big match in Perth next week.

That so many of their countrymen are tipping the Boks to win should be seen as an indication by the team that there are still many hearts back here who do still bleed green.

For it has to be the heart, and not logical thought, that sees South Africa as the favoured team. The facts simply speak for themselves: Only three wins against top teams in the last three years, all of them narrow home wins against Australia. And no significant away win of any consequence since that mighty day back in Paris in 1999 when Jannie de Beer delivered his freak show.

While many South Africans appeared to be taken by surprise that the Boks were not among the top four contenders ranked by an Australian newspaper earlier this week, it would have come as a massive surprise to most neutral rugby observers had they been included ahead of any of the teams that were.

The Boks have only beaten one of those sides in the past few years, and even then they had to dig really deep to get home ahead of the Wallabies in Pretoria (2001), Johannesburg (2002) and Cape Town (2003).

It is the nature of a World Cup, with so many mismatches and poor teams in the early rounds, that a surprise is always possible. If the Boks do win against England, they should go all the way to the semi-finals, where just 160 minutes will seperate them from glory.

Looked at this way, the World Cup is probably an easier competition to win than the Tri-Nations. As Chester Williams says, they definitely do have an outside chance of winning the World Cup.

But to install the South Africans as favourites ahead of the tournament just does not make logical sense. There must be more green hearts out there than seem possible when the Boks were pilloried for their poor performances in mid-year.