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The 28-19 victory to the Springboks over the All Blacks at Blomfontein, a historically large victory in this series of Tests going back to 1921, denied the visitors a bonus point and created the momentum for South African rugby to achieve the Holy Grail trifecta of a Super Rugby title (to the Bulls), a series victory over the British and Irish Lions, and the Tri-Nations trophy.
The Wallabies in 2001 and the All Blacks in 2005 achieved this Holy Grail trifecta. The Springboks are on track to do the same thing.
The key is winning their three home Tests, denying, if possible, the Wallabies and the All Blacks any bonus points in South Africa, and winning an away Test or getting bonus points in them.
So, going into the Durban Test on Saturday, it’s a case of one down, two to go.
The Springboks have confirmed their status right now as the best rugby team in the world. The confidence they will take from out-playing the All Blacks for most of this Test should allow them to play more expansively to exploit their very dangerous wingers, neither of whom received more than one pass in the Test that I saw.
Curiously for such a one-sided Test, there was a distinct possibility with 10 minutes to go that the Springboks would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Rian Pienaar missed three easy penalties early on, two of them hitting the posts. And instead of being 17 – 3 in the lead just after half-time, the Springboks could have been 26 – 3 and counting.
Having clawed their way back into the game, the All Blacks then lost whatever composure and nous they had shown in the previous 20 minutes when Jason Eaton dropped a pass from Piri Weepu, after the halfback had stood over the rucked ball so long the Springboks had plenty of time to number up and then charge the hapless second-rower.
Weepu, who played very well again, aside from this and the next play, then foolishly tried to keep the ball in play after Pierre Spieshad toed through the dropped ball. The better play was to take the lost of ground and possession and start again. A few seconds later Jacque Fourie was grounding the ball in the corner for a clinching try.
Instead of being 4 points down and still in the Test, the All Blacks were 9 down, out of the Test with only minutes to play, with the bonus point squandered.
This brain explosion by Weepu merely mirrored a host of other stupidities perpetrated by the All Blacks throughout the Test.
Has there ever been a dumber play, for instance, than Neemia Tialata’s attempted quick drop out right near the sideline? That stupidity resulted in a successful penalty for the Springboks.
Then there was Brendon Leonard, totally off his game, feeding the ball incorrectly in two successive scrums. Just dumb play, although to be fair the referee Alain Rolland allowed far worse feeds from Fourie du Preez which were so far under the number 8’s feet a rugby league halfback would have been proud of the biased line of the feed.
And then there was the mad All Blacks tactic of kicking bombs from inside their own 22. In a number of instances, there were no chaser. On one occasion Conrad Smith (arguably the best player on the field) was penalised unfairly for being just on-side.
The upshot, anyway, of these tactics was that the Springboks were able to run the ball back at the All Blacks from deep inside New Zealand territory.
And time after time, the All Blacks conceded penalties from the pressure involved with having to defend the charging attacks. Playing at altitude on the veld the best tactic to get out of your own territory is Bob Dwyer’s immortal instruction: ‘Kick it to the sh*t house.’
This brings us to why the Springboks are number one right now and why they won the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Two words provide the answer: Victor Matfield.
The Springboks through Matfield’s mastery of lineout-jumping and applying the right tactics on the opposition throw force sides to give up the safety of the touch line when things go awry. They know that the Springboks will win their own lineout through Matfield and then do a rolling maul that is hard to stop, in the manner of England’s World Cup-winning side in 2003.
In my view, not using the 22 as a safe kicking zone to touch is a mistake. Instead of conceding the lineouts to the Springboks, as the All Blacks did with one exception (Jason Eaton’s steal late in the Test), the All Blacks should have devised tactics to neutralise Matfield.
They, the All Blacks and Wallaby coaching staff, should ask themselves this question: ‘What would Victor Matfield do in organising a lineout if he were competing against himself?’
The first thing, I reckon, is that he’d double-team himself. This would force throws to Bakkies Botha and Juan Smith. Smith is terrific at the back of the lineout, but he is at the back and there is a bigger margin of error in this throw than the throw to Matfield. The longer throw, too, would show the referee and the assistant referee that the throw to Matfield is invariably down his line, not down the centre of the lineout.
Bakkies Botha is such a big man he is vulnerable at number 2 to someone with a bit of a leap. For the All Blacks, for instance, I’d put Jerome Kaino against him. The Wallabies have James Horwill, a strong and quick leaper.
And then I’d do something on my own throw that I haven’t seen since the All Blacks tried to nullify the great jumping of John Eales. Coach Laurie Mains, a shrewd thinker, used to use his two linout jumpers, Robin Brooke and Ian Jones together. The theory here was that Eales could not mark both jumpers. This tactic often resulted in the All Blacks actually winning the lineouts against Eales and the other Wallaby jumpers.
In other words, if a side concedes the lineouts to the Springboks, it virtually concedes them the game. So hopefully the All Blacks at Durban and the Wallabies at Cape Town will actually challenge the Springboks at their strongest point. If the challenge succeeds, the Springboks then become vulnerable.
But right now, without this sort of challenge, the Springboks are number one, with a bullet to go on to win the Tri-Nations unless the Matfield factor is nullified.