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South Africa's Bryan Habana, right, lines up Australia's Nathan Sharpe.
In boxing terms, the Wallabies won a clear-cut points decision against the Springboks in Brisbane on Saturday; as opposed to the knockout of the Springboks at Auckland and TKO at Wellington inflicted by the All Blacks.
Part of my confidence leading into this match was related to the Brisbane hoodoo for the Springbok, and in fact for other visiting international rugby sides. Greg Clarke, the excellent Fox rugby caller, gave a statistic that the Wallabies have now won 40 of their last 46 Tests at Brisbane. This includes eight consecutive Test wins against the Springboks.
Suncorp Stadium has the best playing surface anywhere in the world. The ground, which was built to host State of Origin matches, has a great design for watching rugby matches of both codes. The ball-in-hand game that the Wallabies (finally) adopted for the Test is perfectly suited to the venue.
So the hoodoo, the perfect surface to play running rugby, the Springboks’ brain-dead attack on the IRB referees (ensuring their vigilance for the inevitable Springboks foul play), and the fatigue factor involved with the Springboks getting smashed in the two previous weeks by the All Blacks, created the sort of perfect rugby storm that virtually ensured a Wallaby victory.
Helping this outcome was the arrogance of the Springboks in the way they scheduled travel plans which virtually ensured their tiredness was accentuated on Saturday night. It’s hard to believe but at 4 a.m. on the Sunday morning after the Wellington Test, the Springboks left for Brisbane. The lethargic way they played at Brisbane suggests that they had not recovered.
The All Blacks, incidentally, were in Melbourne on Saturday night which allowed their coaching staff to be at Suncorp to watch the enthralling Test live.
The other piece of arrogance is the refusal of the Springboks to change their game from the kicking, thugging, and then run the ball as a final resort type of game that was so successful for them last season.
As everyone in the rugby world knows, except the Springboks apparently, the tackle interpretation has changed from last year and now favours (correctly) the attacking and not the defending side.
So the first two times Ruan Pienaar got the ball at Brisbane he kicked.
Then we had Jacque Fourie commit a dangerous tackle on Richard Brown. He was correctly given a yellow card for this, and has been suspended for four matches. Fourie, like Botha and Burger (who did some un-noticed eye-scrapping in the Test), has form. He was suspended last season for a similar offence.
When I heard Phil Kearns on the Fox commentary say that ‘maybe a penalty’ should have been awarded for the dangerous tackle, I wrote down in my note book: ‘Someone should tell Kearns to shut up.’ This was commentary that was on a par with that of Peter de Villiers for its ignorance. If you make a dangerous tackle, you get sin-binned.
Last week I got plenty of bagging mainly from South African supporters for suggesting that it seems to be part of the Springboks game plan to perpetrate some form of thuggery early on in a Test to intimidate the opposition. Three acts of thuggery in the early moments of the first three Tri Nations tends to suggest a pattern.
There were a number of aspects of the Wallabies’ game that were good. For one important thing, they showed more legitimate mongrel than they have for some time.
Rocky Elsom, I thought, played his best game for the Wallabies. He made some mistakes with the finishing off of his runs. He is not a skillful player as far as passing or kicking are concerned. But his tackling was hard-shouldered and effective, and his running hit the right lines and gave the Wallabies great go-forward ball.
His match statistics were terrific: three linebreaks, 16 runs for 114m, three off-loads, seven tackle busts, four lineout wins. No wonder he looked exhausted, physically shattered in fact, when he faced the cameras after the Test.
The scrum held up, just, against what is not a particularly strong Springboks scrum. At Melbourne, the All Blacks, who do have a strong scrum, will try to do to the Wallabies at scrum time what England did to them. If they get on top at scrum time then the Wallabies could be in for a hard night.
The lineout with only one loss held up better than the All Blacks at Wellington. The forwards stopped the rolling mauls, except a crucial rumble on their try line which resulted in a Springboks try to Gurthro Steenkampf.
Quade Cooper played a perfectly under-stated game, rather like that of Daniel Carter at Wellington. There was no need for him to make sizzling breaks. He took on the line occasionally but contented himself with linking up with his backs and forwards to keep the pressure on the Springboks tacklers.
The threat of his running and the Springboks’ attempts to thwart the gaps created chances for Will Genia. Genia once again demonstrated that he is now ready to be ranked with the greatest of the modern Wallaby halfbacks, a golden line from Ken Catchpole, Des Connor, John Hipwell and Nick Farr-Jones.
With Cooper’s suspension, my guess is that Deans will play Berrick Barnes in Cooper’s place at Melbourne. He must give him the instruction to give away the stupid kicking game that Waratahs coaching staff imposed on him and the other backs this Super 14 season.
David Pocock had a blinder. He exposed the Springboks’ tactical stupidity of not playing a ‘fetcher’. Pocock made a crucial tackle on the Wallabies try line and then forced a penalty by driving through the ensuing ruck. He got turnovers, in the McCaw manner. And by just being there he forced the Springboks forwards to get to many rucks and mauls they were trying to avoid to conserve their flagging energy.
So the Wallabies go to Melbourne with spirits uplifted from their great victory.
They have won in Melbourne against the All Blacks, a victory which resulted in them clawing back an All Black lead at half-time. But that All Blacks side, in 2007, had just made the tough trip back from South Africa a few days earlier.
Unlike the Springboks, a side on the slide, the All Blacks are a side on the up. And so, of course, are the Wallabies. So it’s game on in Melbourne!