This time there is no ‘but’

It was amazing how many people bumped into late on Saturday and into Sunday lauded the Springbok performance against the Wallabies and then added words such as these – “but they nearly blew it by taking their foot off the accelerator”.

That is hogwash. The Boks never nearly blew anything, they were in control of the Perth match from the moment they went up 12-0 after 10 minutes and while the Australians did look impressive with ball in hand for long periods of the game, they were never going to successfully play catch-up against this Bok team.

It seems that as so often happens when the team you support begins to dominate opponents regularly, the rules start to change. When they are not winning, you expect them to win, then when they start winning consistently you expect them to win in style, which explained the criticism directed at the Boks in the home leg.

Now that they are playing with the “style” that was demanded, the expectation has shifted to a sense that they should be winning by 50. It reminds me of the expectation at the Wanderers during the era when the Transvaal "Mean Machine" dominated local domestic cricket.

For me this time there is no ‘but”. If it was the first match of a Lions series and the Boks had allowed the opposition to gain confidence in the last minutes like the Wallabies were allowed to at Subiaco it would be different. This is not a Lions series, though, the Wallabies are out of the competition, and for the Boks to lose it from now they will have to blindfold themselves before the next match and lie on the ground for the entire 80 minutes.

The Tri-Nations is coming to South Africa, and the Boks did what so many were hoping they would do by showing that their game strategy does not preclude the scoring of tries.

I describe it as “their” strategy on purpose for like former Bulls coach Heyneke Meyer said in a Sunday newspaper piece, the four-try win did not come about because the Springboks shifted dramatically from the template they employed in the home leg when they were criticised for being boring.

The basics of rugby remain the same, and the roll of World Cup winners tells us that a strong kicking game is an indispensible core of every truly successful team, but trends do change. Before Saturday’s game I suggested in a newspaper column that the time was right for the Boks to surprise the Aussies by running it as they would not be expecting it.

This does not just apply to the Boks, but to rugby across the board at the moment – kicking has become so prevalent that teams are expecting the opposition to kick back and in some instances are thus leaving space for the defending team to attack from deep positions.

Western Province exhibited this with telling effect in their Currie Cup win over the Sharks at the weekend when Tonderai Chavhanga scored a try that was sparked by Joe Pietersen opting to tap and run from inside his 22 after being awarded a mark. The Sharks would have expected the kick, their defence wasn’t organised for WP to run at them from there and the result was a try at the other end.

This was probably the same logic that inspired the Boks to try and run from inside their own 22 from a scrum. The move floundered because of a handling error, but the way the Bok support runners were organising themselves, it did seem they were looking to attack.

The Aussies would not have been expecting it, there was an element of surprise, and in that sense it may have been “on” to run from so deep. In any case, they were 15-0 ahead by that stage. But once the element of surprise is gone it would be folly to try it again, and the Boks did well to resist the temptation to do so. The only occasion after that where they ran from a really deep field position was off a turn-over ball in the second half.

Next time the Boks play the Wallabies they will be more alert to where they were hurt this time, they may load defenders back into those channels, and the Boks may be forced back into kicking a lot more. As John Smit says, you do whatever it takes to win.

The point though is that for most of the Perth game the Boks stuck to the basics of what has worked for them so far – all four tries came from good field position, most of the attacking play came from good field position, and their win was built around mistakes they forced the Wallabies into making.

Maybe not all the mistakes were forced, for the injuries to the first choice Wallaby centres clearly hurt them. But their ineffectual defence that allowed the Boks in for two first phase tries from scrum ball was rank amateurish.

Nonetheless, Peter de Villiers, his coaching team and the senior players deserve immense credit for targeting this weakness, and as De Villiers says, seeing something that has been worked on in training come to such spectacular fruition in a match must be immensely satisfying.

And satisfied is what De Villiers should be right now, as should everyone else involved with the Boks, and the supporters. Four wins in four starts in the Tri-Nations, the closest the opposition comes is seven points – come on, what more can we expect than that?