Storming Fort Knox ain’t easy

Browsing through my bookshelf the other day, I happened upon my copy of John Robbie’s autobiography, The Game of my Life, and spent some time re-reading it.

I am not sure whether Robbie has ever updated the book, but it would be fascinating to hear his perspective on some of the things he wrote about now that it is 22 years later. The book came out in 1989, which was two years after the inaugural World Cup in New Zealand, and seeing we are just a few days from seeing the tournament return to that country, it was particularly interesting to read his take on 1987.

He wrote that he couldn’t see how it could be regarded as a true World Cup without South Africa. In that sense, the World Cup that starts in Auckland on Friday is the first dinkum World Cup that New Zealand are hosting.

Of course the All Blacks won that first World Cup, and it is still the only time they have had their name inscribed on the Webb Ellis Cup. They won the tournament without really having to raise a sweat. Robbie made the point that the All Blacks, as hosts at a time when New Zealand rugby was strong, would probably still have won had the Boks been present.

But he argued that the Boks were the only teams that might have mounted a credible challenge to that New Zealand side (remember they had won the Cavalier series in 1986).

As we go into this year’s tournament I would say the same thing as he did all those years ago, only I would add Australia to the list of credible challengers: the other two Sanzar nations both stand a definite chance, but New Zealand should win it and I would be surprised if they didn’t.

That is not writing off the Bok chances, just being realistic and hopefully tempering some of the inevitable overreaction that will accompany a Bok exit in a semifinal against the All Blacks should that happen.

If there is any team in the world right now that the All Blacks should fear on their home turf it is the Boks. That is because the South Africans are the team that has beaten them most at home in the last few years, though the French of course did turn the trick in early 2009.

The Boks won a memorable test in Dunedin in 2008 through a freakish last-minute Ricky Januarie try, and a year later, thanks to some stupendous long range kicking from Frans Steyn, they were comfortably ahead for most of the way in the Tri-Nations decider in Hamilton a year later.

In the same time the Wallabies haven’t really come close to the All Blacks when they have played on that side of the Tasman Sea, and they haven’t won in Auckland, which is where the two Antipodean teams would clash if they met in the final, since goodness knows when.

In fact, it’s been a sod of a long time since the All Blacks have tasted defeat in Auckland full stop (though I was there when the Boks held them to a draw at Eden Park in 1994), which underlines why some Kiwis are peddling the line “If we get to Auckland we will win the Cup”.

There isn’t much chance of the All Blacks not getting to Auckland, even if France do shock them in the Pool stages, so realistically we have to accept that for any visiting team to win the trophy they are going to have to pull off the rugby equivalent of storming Fort Knox or successfully pulling off a cavalry or infantry led invasion of Russia in the winter time.

What stands in the way of the Kiwis, apart from the South African and Australian intent, is themselves. A lot has been written and said about the extra pressure that will be brought to bear on the All Blacks on home turf, and you just have to ask the Protea cricketers about the impact that choker tag can have once you reach the knockout stage of a four yearly event.

But their coach Graham Henry is in the unique position of being an All Black coach taking the nation to a second World Cup. In other words, he has been granted the opportunity to learn from his mistakes, something none of his predecessors were.

And the message that is coming out of New Zealand, with all the talk of tournament rugby and confronting the challenge of playing a knockout fixture, is that he has learned from those mistakes.

So while my South African heart would love to see the Springboks win, and in my view they are better prepared than they have been in ages, my mind accepts the likelihood that while they will make it into the last week, their tournament will end where it did in Cardiff in 1999 -- in the playoff for third and fourth place after being beaten by a good team playing at home in the semifinal.