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Some years ago I opined that it is harder to win the Tri-Nations tournament than the Rugby World Cup.
Now Nick Mallett, the coach of the Springboks during the record seventeen Test wins sequence in 1998/99 and the current coach of Italy, has made the same argument.
The reason I offered for my rather Southern Hemisphere triumphalist opinion (and Mallett’s reasons, too) were that the Tri-Nations teams (Australia, South Africa and New Zealand) have generally been the best teams in the world since the first RWC in 1987.
The exception was the period between October 2003 and June 2004 when England (which won the RWC in 2003) was the top ranked team for 35 weeks.
The current world rankings are: South Africa 90.18, New Zealand 89.79, Australia 84.56, Argentina 83.42, England 83.16, Wales 80,12, France 79.24, Ireland 77.18, Scotland 76.92, Fiji 76.77.
It is possible to win the RWC without playing a Tri-Nations side.
South Africa in 1995 is the only side to win the RWC and beat both other Tri-Nations sides in the process. New Zealand won the RWC without playing Australia, the strongest team in the world at that stage.
Australia won in 1991 with South Africa not being in the tournament. In 1999, Australia won the RWC without playing New Zealand. And in 2007, the Springboks won their second RWC, but this time they did not have to face either New Zealand or Australia.
To put the issue into a perspective, the Springboks won the 2007 RWC, but the All Blacks won the Tri-Nations tournamernt that year.
Who will win the Tri-Nations this year?
After the disaster of my 2007 RWC predictions, with the fearless prediction that South Africa could not win with its hopeless away record, I’m giving up predictions and going for indicative guesses.
My indicative guess is that the Wallabies are at least a year off being a formidable side, and of being capable of winning difficult matches outside of Australia. What they have going for them, though, is a talented coach in Robbie Deans, the best for the Wallabies since Rod Macqueen, and a tendency to play up to the level of the opposition with a terrific defensive system.
South Africa or New Zealand?
The Springboks are the current RWC champions and have kept most this side. They’ve won their last thirteen Tests.
Graham Henry calls the current Springboks a “10 out of 10 side.”
The question mark over the team is whether the new coach, Peter de Villiers, has the real stuff as a Test coach. Many are called and few are chosen.
The All Blacks have won 29 consecutive Tests in New Zealand. They are probably closer to the end of this run of success than the beginning. They’ve lost a number of senior players from last year. Richie McCaw is out, at least until the last few Tri-Nations matches, and Ali Williams, the only world-class lineout jumper the All Blacks have, is going to play with an injured ankle.
The opinion of Mark Keohane, a feisty and opiniated South African rugby writer who was the media man for Mallett, makes sense to me: “The reality is this. If a Bok team missing only Jacque Fourie and Fourie du Preez can’t beat an All Blacks team without Rokocoko, Mauger, Maclister, Kelleher, McCaw, Collins, Jack and Hayman, then they won’t win in New Zealand for another decade.”
Therefore, all three teams – the Wallabies, the Springboks and the All Blacks – have ‘everything to play for,’ as the cliche suggests.