If they have followed the Scottish media during their week in Edinburgh, the Springboks will have noted the truth behind the words in one of the adverts being flighted on SuperSport for their forthcoming series of matches in the UK.
The one about a target being on their backs and the accentuation of the intensifying pressure that comes with being the world champions and the team every other nation wants to knock over. For Scotland, Sunday’s game against the successive Rugby World Cup winners, according to scribes and former Scotland players, offers a chance for them to achieve a defining moment in their growth as an international team. It will be thus for every team the Boks play on tour.
For the Boks? Well, on the face of it, this game is a scenario of having more to lose than to gain. Scotland aren’t Portugal but they are much lower on the World Rugby rankings, seventh, than South Africa’s second. So the Boks should be expected to win, even though, unlike the last meeting between the teams when Scotland were ranked fifth going into a RWC pool game in Marseille, the game is being played in front of the passionate Scotland supporters at Murrayfield.
RULE NO.1 IS NOT JUST TO WIN, BUT DO SO WITH STYLE
However, mention of the Boks being second cues the point about what the Boks will be looking to gain from Sunday’s game. It was summed up in the interviews Bok coach Rassie Erasmus and SA Rugby chief executive Rian Oberholzer gave in the UK rugby media this week. The Boks want to grow their brand, they want to close the gap on the All Blacks. Even though they are second best on the field currently to the Boks, the All Blacks still have an advantage on the Boks when it comes to being the biggest drawcard in international rugby.
The drive then is not just to win, but to do so in style, and to be entertaining to watch while going about it. Reading the words of Erasmus and Oberholzer, it shines a new light on the employment of former All Black player and Japan coach Tony Brown as the Bok attack coach. That decision may not have been driven by just what playing a more complete game could do to the Bok chances of achieving domination on the field.
It may also be about making overseas people want to watch games involving the Boks because they know they will be entertained. The suffocation technique that has been the Bok staple for much of the post-isolation era has tended to be the tried and tested route to success for them. Yes, that strategy gets Bok wins, but does it win them friends? Does it make the global market sit up and say “Hey, I want to go and watch this team play live!”?
It is a rare thing for supporters of a particular nation to properly appreciate and enjoy the skill levels of a side that beats theirs. It did happen at Parc des Princes in Paris during Nick Mallett’s first tour as Bok coach in 1997. The Boks won 52-10 and they were cheered so much at the finish by the French crowd that they did a lap of honour.
But eight years ago in Durban, when the All Blacks played with a combination of great skill, pace and power to beat the Boks 57-15, there probably weren’t too many in the crowd at Kings Park that day who sat there thinking “I am glad I am here to see this.”
Conversely though, while England fans and Michael Catt in particular won’t remember it with any fondness, the rest of those who watched the seismic moment for rugby provided by Jonah Lomu’s barnstorming performance in the 1995 RWC semifinal at Newlands will have said those words or words like them.
MALLETT’S TEAM SHOWED A NORTHERN TOUR CAN PROVIDE SPECTACLE
When the Boks head north at this time of year, there is always a lot of talk about the conditions and how they will impact the Bok approach. You do need to be sensitive to the conditions you are going to play in on a given day, and the Boks nearly paid for their unwillingness to adjust when they played England on a wet Paris night in last year’s RWC semifinal.
But the aforementioned tour under the coaching of Mallett and the captaincy of Gary Teichmann produced some of the most spectacular rugby seen from the Boks since SA rugby’s unification and then readmission to the international stage in 1992. So the conditions can conspire in favour of rugby that has aesthetic appeal, and it was at Murrayfield later on during that 1997 tour that the Boks racked up their highest points tally of a high-scoring tour – 68.
It won’t be anything like that this time, and while the Boks have sounded a bit like a stuck record this week with their repetition of how wary they are of different aspects of the Scottish threat, be it the organised and improved forward pack, the Glasgow Warriors midfield or Duhan van der Merwe’s stature and explosiveness on the wing, what they are saying is nonetheless true.
Those Boks who also play in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, and the team to be announced later on Friday should include a significant number of those, know full well the capabilities of the champion Glasgow team. The Scotland team is also yet to be announced, but will include several Warriors players playing around the X-factor of Bath’s Finn Russell.
Back in July when Ireland were here, many South Africans were expecting the Bulls’ good win over the Ireland-laden Leinster team to mean something to the confidence levels when the two international sides clashed at the same Loftus venue three weeks later. In the same way, Glasgow’s win in the final should mean something positive for the Scots.
They will be thinking that if they can win such a big game at the most inhospitable of venues, they surely have a chance of winning at home. And they do. But the Boks are second on the rankings, and should be first, while Scotland are seventh – that translates into the Boks starting as strong favourites.
Until a mini injury swathe started to cut its way through the squad, with the latest casualty being lock Ruan Nortje, the make-up of Erasmus’ group indicated a strong desire to make a statement on this tour from a performance viewpoint. There was less of an element of experimentation than we have seen so far from Erasmus in this first post-World Cup year.
That resolve, and the work done in preparation in Jersey last week, should translate into the Boks producing their A-game in Edinburgh – and if they do that, they will win and should do so with something to spare.
SCOTLAND V SOUTH AFRICA – Murrayfield, Sunday 18.10
Teams to be announced.
Prediction: Springboks to win by 12
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