Boks have reason to be wary of underestimating Wales

The three-match test series between South Africa and Wales is now less than five weeks away from kick-off and the confidence of the visitors should be at an all-time low if you pay attention to the events of the past few months.

Scarlets raised their game against the DHL Stormers and were competitive, but the final round of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship confirmed the mess that the Welsh club game is in right now.

The elation that greeted the Ospreys’ two losing bonus points in the game against the Bulls in Swansea that won them the conference aptly summed up where Welsh club rugby is. It was enough to secure the Ospreys qualification for next year’s Champions Cup, but not enough to get them into the top eight and the URC play-offs.

BOTTOM HALF MADE UP OF WELSH TEAMS

So the bottom eight on the final URC log is 50 per cent made up of Welsh teams, with the Dragons’ loss to the Emirates Lions in their last game meaning that the second from bottom team on the log ends the season not having won a home game since last September. That’s painful and might explain why there were open spaces in the stands at all the games the Welsh teams hosted in the final round.

The Ospreys only lost by seven points in the end against the Bulls but that final scoreline flattered the losers. The Bulls were in control from start to finish and, like the Scarlets the following day at Parc Y Scarlets, an argument could be forwarded that they got the rub of the green from the referee.

The three losses to South African teams though shouldn’t have been the main reason for any gnashing of teeth among rugby supporters in the Welsh valleys. It was the humiliation Cardiff suffered at the hands of Benetton that should most have raised the eyebrows and increased the worried frowns.

FEARS OF A REPEAT OF LOFTUS 1998

The 69-22 scoreline in a game where one Welsh writer said Cardiff made Benetton look like the All Blacks, might have been an aberration. But it came just a few months after Italy’s famous win over the Welsh national team, and that is the reason it should reverberate. Are Wales slipping to the point that a return to where they were in 1998 is imminent?

To refresh memories, or inform those who maybe weren’t born yet or were too young to remember, it was in 1998 that the Welsh team came to South Africa and conceded 96 points in a game at Loftus. Had Naka Drotske not knocked the ball on with the tryline at his mercy, Nick Mallett’s Springboks would have topped the three figure mark.

Certainly the last game Wales played in the Six Nations, and indeed some of those before that, were disturbing. However, the indications from Wales are that the national coach, Wayne Pivac, is moving back towards the Warren Gatland way, and the Warren Gatland selections.

SUPER RUGBY FAILURE DIDN’T ALWAYS CARRY TO THE BOKS

And while the picture painted by the Welsh club performances is a bleak one, let’s not forget what often held true for the Boks during the Super Rugby era. Often the doom merchants would come out in force during a poor South African Super Rugby season, only for the Boks to be competitive, or even more than that.

That aforementioned 1998 international season, the year that South Africa won the Tri-Nations for the first time and Mallett’s Boks, under the captaincy of Gary Teichmann, swept all before them en route to a record-equalling 17 consecutive victories, did not coincide with a successful season for South African teams in what was then the Super 12.

The Sharks did make the semifinals, but generally it was a nightmare year for local sides, with the Stormers conceding more than 70 points to the Blues in Auckland. Yet when the Boks went to New Zealand a few months later, they won in Wellington. And won the return match in Durban.

SOME STARS WILL BE BACK

Don’t forget either that not all the Welsh players play for Welsh clubs. For a start, their key player, flyhalf Dan Biggar, doesn’t. And neither does fellow British and Irish Lion Taulupe Faletau. Let’s not forget that under Gatland, Wales also enjoyed an inordinately good record against the Boks, particularly between the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England and the one in Japan four years later. The Boks did win their semifinal in Japan, but it took a last-gasp penalty from Handre Pollard.

With Faletau and George North, two stalwarts of the best Welsh years, now back from injury, and skipper Alun Wyn Jones now playing regularly again after making a comeback from a long layoff in the defeat to Italy, the Welsh can now select a test starting team not that much inferior on paper, if at all, to the one that lost out so narrowly in Yokohama.

With the Welsh touring squad of 33 being named last week, the Welsh media have been speculating about what the starting team will look like. The one that appeared on the Wales Online website the day after the announcement doesn’t look half bad.

The Boks should expect to win the series and, as South Africa have never lost a match to Wales on home soil, anything less than a 3-0 clean sweep of the games to be played in Pretoria (2 July), Bloemfontein (9 July) and Cape Town (16 July) would be seen as failure.

However, if you look at the following team they are a threat that does need to be taken seriously: Liam Williams, Louis Rees Zammit, George North, Nick Tompkins, Josh Adams, Dan Biggar, Tomos Williams, Taulupe Faletau, Josh Navidi, Dan Lydiate, Alun Wyn Jones, Adam Beard, Tomas Francis, Ryan Elias, Wyn Jones.