Boks Must Win Rugby Championship
Just
give the Bokke the Rugby Championship trophy today and forfeit their incoming
cakewalk wins against the All Blacks and Los Pumas. Those two are just wasting
their time after watching South Africa ‘Green’ dismantle Australia at Ellis
Park! Imagine what our ‘Gold’ squad will do in Australasia and South America!
You can’t
blame me and others for being gassed – and thus totally getting carried away - with
what we saw on Saturday. Realistically, though, it only gets harder for Rassie Erasmus’
lads as New Zealand are still favourites to win their 917th Rugby Championship
on the bounce, while the glorified Jaguares will back themselves to bend the
Boks again on home turf.
However,
the try that Cobus Reinach scored deep into injury time long after the Boks had
sealed another win over the Wallabies in Jozi could go a long way in deciding
where the trophy goes in a shortened, one-chance-or-die competition. It
confirmed a bonus point victory, leaving the Boks on top of the log, while
crucially, the All Blacks clung on for dear life in Buenos Aires, having to
settle for four points. We all know the title will be settled at the Cake Tin
this weekend, with the age-old archenemies powering up to full strength
selection-wise in kind. Granted, if the Boks do win, they conclude their
campaign with a very uncomfortable match against Los Pumas, so there’s another
problem. If this scenario plays out, the All Blacks will fancy themselves to hammer
the Wallabies and hope Argentina does them a favour, so this getting too far
ahead of myself already poses its dangers!
Anyway,
since the Great 57-0 Massacre Of Albany in September 2017, all three Tests
between the Boks and All Blacks have been decided by one, two and two points
respectively. The rivalry is truly alive again, and the hosts will do
everything to not suffer consecutive losses at home against their visitors. For
context, had the All Blacks lost at Loftus last year, they might as well have tossed
the Rugby Championship trophy (which they had won the week before in Argentina)
into the nearest bin outside the stadium. It would have confirmed a 2-0 “series”
loss against what was a young, inexperienced and wounded Springbok team
recovering from… ***shudder***… 2016 and 2017, leading to a bitter-bitter-not-even-close-to-sweet
and embarrassing aftertaste. The stakes are very, very high. Remember, these
two great nations meet in the first round of Rugby World Cup 2019, so a body
blow has to be landed NOW!
New
Zealand will be much better after a scrappy win on Saturday, while the
frontline South Africans who were out in the Antipodes watching their
understudies will feel the heat to perform. Importantly, the All Blacks have
looked, shall I say, ‘beatable’ since the British and Irish Lions tour of 2017.
They are still the best team on the planet and should not to be trifled with,
but they are not invincible like they seemed before that remarkable series. We’d
be fearing a “Blacklash” this coming Saturday which usually follows an
uncharacteristically poor performance by them, but I doubt the Boks will be particularly
worried about this. Erasmus has transformed them into a very good team, only
lacking consistency and putting in 85-minute performances, seeing that they are
the type of side to beat a New Zealand and England, but then lose to Italy and
the likes. We have been through the most, fam…
So with
the theorisation and scenario-construction out of the way, let me enjoy what is
the most exciting build-up to a Bok match in a while. I think that sometimes we
Satafrikans deny ourselves joy through pessimism, and must instead surf the
wave of euphoria that swept through our rugby landscape this past weekend for
as long as is possible. Saturday morning will be one for the ages.
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