It wouldn’t be a test match against the Wallabies if there weren’t a few mind games being played early on, and this week has been no exception.
With the Springboks looking to overcome a poor historical record Down Under, all eyes have been on just how the Wallabies will respond to the Boks' powerhouse scrum, their bomb squad replacement strategy and the fact that the team works well off physical dominance.
No surprise that this is exactly the place that Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt went to in his first press conference of the week, and the strategy is quite clear.
Try and stir up some debate and get into the mind of the referees for the weekend.
The Wallabies are well-known for employing all sorts of tactics the get the upper hand.
The Boks have traditionally struggled to dominate them at the set-piece even though they don’t rank as one of the world’s top scrums, but there is a sense that this time it may be different.
While the Wallabies have the momentum from three straight wins in their July tests, they are very much in a rebuilding phase around Schmidt, and they will use whatever they have against the World Champions in order to continue that momentum.
No wonder Schmidt was already making noises about speeding up the game, and moving players around the park.
NEW TIME LIMITS
Expect the Wallabies to make a big noise about speeding up the set-piece with the new laws recommending just 30 seconds to set a scrum.
The hope, while more broadly being to speed up the game, will be for the Aussies to throw the Boks off their normal game, and by trying to rush them into the set-piece, disrupt their normal flow of momentum.
Schmidt mentioned it coyly in his answer about the bomb squad on Sunday, possibly hoping the Boks would take the bait.
“There is still fatigue in the game and if a ‘Bomb Squad’ member comes on at halftime, they’ve still got to play 40 minutes.
“One of the challenges is to keep players moving from set-piece to set-piece. With the new law trials, 30 seconds to set a scrum, 30 seconds to have that line-out under way, 60 seconds, not 90 seconds, for a conversion now.
“Some of those times are being contracted a little bit and maybe that will impact on the size of the player.
“There are risks. Talking to Vern Cotter, who is obviously a good mate of mine, around the Blues this year, with a 6-2 split they got two injuries very early on in their backline and played a half-back on the wing for the whole of the second half.
“You can get stung by it, so any innovation is great until it’s not.”
It isn’t new for coaches to try and plant a seed of doubt in the opposition, but the Boks would have heard this all before.
'PITCH UP MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY'
And it took the scrum coach Daan Human to offer a deadpan answer to show just how unfazed the Boks are by the mind games.
“Every team have their own strengths, and we certainly see the scrums as one of ours, but Australia always find a way to manage things there,” said Human.
“The progress they are making in the scrums is clear as they have a 100 per cent record in that area in their last three tests. That said, we’ve also been working on a few things that we want to implement this weekend and we’ll continue to put in the hard yards for the rest of the week.”
Human was nonplussed about the scrum changes, or the fact that the scrum would need to be sped up to comply with the rules.
“It hasn’t been hard for us to adapt to that – in fact, we managed to do 16 live scrums in 20 minutes last week, so it’s not completely new to us,” said Human.
“We like our scrum sessions to be tougher than that which the players will face in a game, and we’ve been measuring that detail this week, so I believe we are where we want to be in that regard.”
With the Boks already having a poor record in Brisbane - their last win was more than a decade ago - Human said pretty dryly that if the preparation was on song, the team wouldn’t struggle on the park.
“Obviously we are aware of that record but most of the coaches and players only joined the team in the last few years, so for us it’s a matter of trying to prepare as well as we can for the clash and to ensure that we pitch up mentally and physically on Saturday.”
The one challenge for the Boks therefore remains to be focused on their own game, and not be disrupted by not only the mind games off the field, but the little tricks that are employed on it as well.
If they do that right, they can overcome whatever challenge the Wallabies pose this Saturday.