So, with the dust having finally settled on this year’s Super Rugby tournament (well, it has for those of us here in the Republic, I imagine the party’s still going strong in Australia, particularly in Queensland), the rugby world’s focus shifts to the ever-approaching Rugby World Cup.

Before I continue, I must give a hearty congratulations to both the Queensland Reds for a truly stunning victory.

Also, a congratulations to the runners up the Crusaders, for achieving what I believe almost no other team in world sport would manage: coming within a whisker of winning a tournament without playing a single game at home.

For that my Kiwi friends I, along with a whole swathe of South Africans, salute you.

As for the Reds, I can unashamedly say that I broke the mold of most ‘Saffers’ and actually supported them (its normally unthinkable for a South African to back Australia in anything at all), behind all the South African sides of course, purely because of the ‘brand of footy’ they played.

I wondered whether they would continue with the same style in the cauldron of a final and, not only did they stick to their guns, they triumphed.

What does this have to do with Rugby World Cup 2011?

Throughout the season, and indeed during the post-mortems of games featuring the Wallabies and All Blacks last year (particularly those where the Springboks came up second-best to the Australasians), a number of the South African (SA) rugby scribes have intimated that the attacking brand of football that put the ‘Boks and many of the SA Super Rugby provincial sides to the sword in recent times is not the type of rugby that will win a World Cup.

Judging by the history of rugby union’s showpiece event, this sentiment has merit.

Almost all the finals that have been contested since 1987 have been won on the back of resolute defense, ferocious physicality, and sheer attritional dominance without much running or throwing the ball around.

In the two Rugby World Cup finals that South Africa has contested, a try was scored in neither, and the Bokke emerged victorious in both.

This is a large part of the reason why many rugby people in this country do not feel all that intimidated by the All Blacks, Wallabies, or any other side in the world intending to use an expansive game plan to hold the William Webb Ellis trophy aloft.

Indeed, there is even a sense of contained smugness in some quarters here regarding the success of Queensland in this year’s Super Rugby tournament, one that, if put into words, would say something like “Yeah, let the Aussies have their fun. We’ll see who and what type of rugga will triumph in New Zealand in October”.

Darren Scott, Supersport’s primary rugby anchor, even went as far as to say, after the final in Brisbane, that “The Aussies can have the Super Rugby title, the All Blacks can take the Tri Nations, and we’ll be happy to hang onto the World Cup.”

After the various other losses that the Boks suffered last year at the hands of their Tri Nations counterparts, Scott also occasionally queried whether the type of football that was continually seeing them end up on the wrong end of the scoreboard would win the World Cup, and most of his analysts usually believed that it wouldn’t.

In the latest episode of “Road to New Zealand”, Supersport’s monthly RWC 2011 build-up program, the network’s other rugby anchor, Matthew Pearce, put the same question forward to his guests.

All agreed that it was unlikely that expansive rugby would ultimately triumph in New Zealand.

Dan Retief, also a guest on the show and one of SA’s most respected rugby observers, was particularly adamant that this World Cup, despite the evolution of the game over the past few years that has encouraged ball-in-hand football instead of ten-man football, will be won as it has often been in the past: through unwavering defense and attrition.

His reasoning for this was that the enormity of the occasions of WC knock-out games would overwhelm the referees, cause them to go into their shells, give an excess of penalties, and subsequently cause games to degenerate into kicking fests.

Whether Retief’s theory will eventuate will only be seen in NZ come October, but I would like to think that the officials have enough experience and temperament to not be overwhelmed by the big occasions.

Now, I am not so disillusioned as to believe that any sport played at the highest level, when the stakes are at their highest, and when failure is simply not an option, can always accommodate flashy and flamboyant play.

Of course, in these instances tight game-plans that minimise error will be the law of the land, but the conservatism of the powers that be in SA rugby is quite distressing at times.

In the same episode of “Road to New Zealand” that featured Retief, there was a segment in which Bok vice-captain Victor Matfield was interviewed.

He made it unequivocally clear that he believed that the Boks should stick to their traditional strengths and not try to copy the rugby played by the Wallabies and the ABs.

He believes that if the Boks remain steadfast in this philosophy, they will be the first side ever to retain rugby union’s “Holy Grail”.

My brother, an unashamed supporter of the Wallabies and Australian rugby in general (our family is Ghanaian in origin, so he feels no obligation to support the Boks), stopped watching the last RWC final in which the Boks triumphed to go and play some videogames; much to my outrage.

In the months immediately after the final, I would argue with him for hours on end, defending the conservatism that saw the Boks home in the end.

He, still bitter about the way that England so unceremoniously bundled the Wallabies out of RWC 2007, continually said I was blinded by patriotism and that there was no flair at all involved in the Boks win, which I so staunchly believed there was.

Four years on, in hindsight, I can honestly say that the only way you would’ve enjoyed the 2007 RWC final was if you were South African; and you better believe we loved everything about it.

But, with the desire for attacking rugby that I have, of late there has been a single question that has been dogging me regarding this year’s RWC tournament. What do I want to win the 2011 RWC: the Boks, or attacking rugby?

By all indications, the Boks (judging by Matfield’s sentiments) will not be out to entertain, and they as well as many of their fans do not care how they keep Bill in SA. And that’s probably how it should be.

But, assuming we see more of what we did in ’07 and the Boks do retain their title as world champions, will this be good for the game from an entertainment perspective? Probably not.

What worries me as much as the ramifications that this would have on global rugby’s merit as a spectacle is the possible implications this could have on the way we play rugby in this country.

In Bob Skinstad’s most recent column on Supersport titled “‘Coaching-out’ the Imagination”, he questions whether flair is too often coached out of South Africa’s elite players once they make it to the top level.

As someone who has played at the very highest levels for South Africa, his views offer valid confirmation for what I have long suspected to be the case with the Boks: that flair and freedom of expression come a very definitive second to winning matches.

The following extract from that article is particularly poignant: “You see, for too long South African rugby has been subject to restrictive coaching. Players fulfil their role, get a pat on the back and move on to the next match.

“How is it that the most creative moment (in the Stormers’ semi-final against the Crusaders) came from a makeshift loose forward (Schalk Brits) who arrived from Saracens only six days before kick-off? Are we coaching the imagination out of our players?”

Skinstad himself was a particularly skilled, wide-running and exciting backrower in his hey-day, so it really is no surprise that he strongly advocates a brand of football akin to what the Reds produced in 2010 and 2011; exciting play coupled with the very necessary starch that is needed to grind out inevitably tight games.

But it has become evident, particularly after the dismal season the Boks had last year, that a few other prominent rugby writers in the Republic have become steadily frustrated at the Boks’ inability or lack of will to evolve their game and build on their strengths in order to become a more multi-dimensional side.

Reporters such as Gavin Rich and Clinton van der Berg have had their articles, dating back from the 2010 end of year tour, tinged with sentiments such as “the Springbok’s inability to evolve their game” or “the Australasian sides having so much more to offer than their South African counterparts”.

These views have quite accurately articulated my own increasing frustration with the overall lack of potency and imagination by South African backlines at the highest level, particularly with regards to the Springboks.

In fact, it is the national side that is the greatest culprit of this, as the Super Rugby sides have shown that they are more than capable of playing effective attacking rugby, if not in quite as dazzling a manner as the Australasian sides.

But even at Super Rugby level this year, some of SA’s most established and celebrated attackers have been most definitely overshadowed by their antipodean counterparts.

For example, whilst Jacques Fourie and Jean de Villiers have made some great plays this season, they combined to nowhere near the devastating levels they have in the past, when together they’d tear apart defenses with astonishing ease and panache.

Indeed the brightest lights in the Stormers’ backline this year were two of their smallest players: Juan de Jongh and Gio Aplon.

Whilst these two scintillating players will definitely be in the RWC squad, and will likely feature in the match 22’s for the games at the business-end of the tournament (should the Boks make it that far), don’t expect them to start any of those games unless injuries alter circumstances.

They are, even by my own reckoning, I’ll admit, possible defensive liabilities not because of their endeavor or technique, but simply because of their lack of bulk.

They would, as they have been before, be targeted by the opposition. Therefore many believe they will likely function only as impact players.

The problem is that there are many other players in SA possessed of the same brilliance as Aplon and de Jongh that certainly do not lack size, but have that flamboyance coached out of them once they make it to the highest levels of the game. Take a player like Morne Steyn for instance. He was, believe it or not, considered to be one of the finest runners of the football in SA in his junior years.

Fast-forward a few years and he is seen as little more than a deadly-accurate goal- and tactical-kicker who fulfills his other roles adequately.

This containing and transformation of flair into conservatism is something that happens entirely too often in this country, which is why a player like Elton Jantjies is probably SA’s best out and out attacking five-eighth, and yet he is still no where near the class of the likes of Quade Cooper.

So when watching the razzle-dazzle play of the Reds and the Crusaders and feeling more than just a little envious, thinking “why can’t SA sides do that?”, it makes it all the more worse because South African rugby is more than capable of producing such play.

One just has to take a look at the young talent in the Republic and marvel. We just continue to shoot ourselves in the foot.

And I am increasingly coming to believe that if the Boks do win the RWC in the way that they seem to be intending to this year, this stifling of imaginative play in South Africa will continue, and we will never see players in the mould of Quade Cooper, Dan Carter, or even Carlos Spencer rise to the top in the SA.

Even more detrimental than the impact this could have on SA, are the results it could have on rugby union as a game at large.

Conservative, unimaginative play may become the law of the land and running rugby may become less and less favoured or utilized at the top flight and rugby as a spectacle may suffer even more.

Is this a dilemma that is exclusive to South African rugby? Are supporters willing to have their teams win by any means necessary, to the possible detriment of the game’s evolution? Thoughts?