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First and fore-most, I am a born and bred South African. I have only left the country a couple times (usually for only weekends) to visit friends and family up in Bremen, Germany.
And as most of you like to point out, I am one of those “Highly arrogant one-eyed Springbok supporters”, who goes “Bokke! Bokke! Bokke!” before every game, wearing a green minor’s head with springbuck horns glued on to it.
In the stadium you may find us eating delicious biltong and sucking alcohol from an orange.
But as a Springbok supporter I’d like to convey or unplug the blueprint if you like, on how to defeat the Boks properly. Especially in a World Cup.
Of course you may choose to learn this information or not. And please realise this information does not make me a traitor of any sort.
But it would fascinate me, to hear your thoughts. The readers. The anti-Boks.
And so here are a couple secrets you may or may not have known about The Boks.
Pieter de Villiers is not as crazy as everybody makes him out to be.
He does and speaks outlandish things in the media. He has questionable and clownish explanations, he frustrates the hell out of the Bok supporters with selection policies and tactics.
And it’s these attributes that makes him a brilliant, sane and clever coach.
He wants you to except the least of him. His mind-games has his opponents on the brink of total anger and lost of concentration.
He doesn’t mind how others perceive him and willingly do things to piss off/inspire players. Pieter is secretly a genius pleading insanity.
Believe it or not, but the Boks do not actually rely on kicking for penalties to “win games”.
They do not even rely on Morne Steyn. The Bok’s biggest arsenal/asset is their forwards.
In South Africa, we believe that the team with the best forwards will win the match, no-matter who the other side have in their backline.
Yes, with our forward play and pressure, we produce a lot of penalties and Morne usually does kick them over.
But in reality, the Boks know how to score tries. In rugby, tries, penalties and drop goals are all means of scoring points. And we do the little things well enough to get the points.
And the easiest would be to receive three points from a penalty. If the opportunity presents itself for a drop-goal, we’ll take that too. Who cares how you win when you win?
What others call boring rugby, we call smart rugby.
We understand that this form of the game (XV man World Cup rugby), and this level are not suited for razzle-dazzle all the time.
We do have some very exciting young players. Pat Lambie, Gio Aplon, Frans Hougaard, Frans Steyn, Sarel Pretorius, Juan de Jongh, Jaco Taute, Elton Jantjies, Gerhard vd Heeven, Johan Sadie and Lwazi Mvovo to name a few. And we see these guys in the Currie Cup and Super Rugby.
So, South Africa is not genetically incapable of producing hard stepping, fast back-line players. We just employ our style of play which suits us and which frustrates our opponents.
Truth be told, we know that other nations consider us boring and predictable. But guess what? We also consider you predictable (although not always boring).
We know exactly what we going to get when we meet, say, Australia or New Zealand, and that’s not South Africa. Back in the 90’s when we came back from isolation, we were first regularly beaten by the other top sides.
But instead of adopting the “if you can’t beat them, join them” idea, which refers to the running style the Australasian teams play, we adopted the “if we can’t beat them, try and beat them some more, because they’ll be expecting us to join them and so we’ll have the element of surprise” strategy. Which works more times then it fails.
The way to beat the Boks is not rocket-science.
If the Wallabies’ focus and concerns are only on the referee and weather condition, then it may be a long night for them.
Beating the Boks at the World Cup all comes down to 80 minutes of pressure, more pressure, scrum-dominance and winning the aerial battle.
You shouldn’t play running rugby in your own half. Don’t give us the ball to play. Beat us at our own game.
One must remember this is not the Bulls where you should simply run at them all night on a dry warm Brisbane night. Or the Stormers where a good first half could win you the game.
This is the Springboks. They are physical, hungry and fearless. Make no mistake.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.