Boks need to engage different gear - and quickly!

On the same afternoon that the Springboks stuttered and stumbled their way to a narrow victory over Argentina to clinch a distant second in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship in Johannesburg, on the other side of the equator Scotland were starting their international season.

By all accounts it was a subdued opening to their Rugby World Cup preparations for Gregor Townsend’s team. They won 23-15 against Italy at Murrayfield, but reportedly never hit top gear. The fine print is that the Scotland coach was fielding a second string team, and they have less depth than a nation like say South Africa.

Why is this significant after a weekend where the All Blacks underlined their superiority in the southern hemisphere and their status as re-emerging World Cup contenders in indelible ink? It’s because if there was a message that was drummed out crystal clear in the Johannesburg dusk on Saturday it is that the Boks shouldn’t be thinking about New Zealand, or France or Ireland for that matter, right now.

When he addressed a media conference in Cape Town at the end of May, the national director of rugby Rassie Erasmus spoke about his concern that the threat posed by Scotland to the Bok advance out of the Pool phase of the World Cup in France would be overlooked. There is so much focus on the match between the Boks on 23 September that the opener against Scotland is largely being relegated to secondary concern.

“Oh, the Boks need not worry, they can hit form and find their gear during the World Cup,” may have been an acceptable approach at some previous tournaments, and that includes even the previous one in Japan, where the result of the opener against the All Blacks in Yokohama didn’t make a material difference to the quest to make the knock-outs. As it turned out, losing the opener proved fortuitous as the quarterfinal ended up being against Japan rather than Ireland.

But this time around the opener is meaningful. If the Boks win against Scotland in Marseille on 10 September, then the big game against Ireland probably won’t decide whether the Boks advance beyond the group stage. It will just be about determining whether they play France or the All Blacks in their quarterfinal. In other words, a choice between six of one and half a dozen of the other.

LOSING TO SCOTS WOULD BE CALAMITOUS

Defeat though in the opener will leave the Boks in the parlous position of having to beat Ireland to avoid the ignominy of becoming the first side from the reigning world champion nature to fail to get out of their Pool.

We will know more about Scotland’s capabilities when they play France in the first of a sequence of home and away games against the world’s No 2 ranked team and the RWC hosts on Saturday. But after his own team’s sub-standard performance against Argentina at the weekend, Erasmus shouldn’t feel the need to warn his players or the supporters about the potential calamity that awaits at the start of the tournament on the second Sunday of September.

Play like they did against the Pumas, or replicate the awful rugby they played in the first 20 minutes of their match against New Zealand a fortnight earlier, and the Boks can certainly face the prospect of a loss to Scotland. Indeed, even Tonga, who lie in wait in the final Pool game on 3 October, will pose a threat given the infusion of All Black players into the south island team.

Bok coach Jacques Nienaber has partly taken the poor form of the two matches that have followed the promising opening against Australia on himself, ascribing the error-ridden performance at Emirates Airlines Park to the team not finding cohesion due to the selection changes made in the Rugby Championship phase of the RWC buildup.

He may have a point. There were nine changes to the side that played against the Wallabies for the match in New Zealand, and another nine for the Pumas game. There will be another raft of changes in the first World Cup warmup game in Buenos Aires this coming Saturday, but then the selections will have to settle for the remaining games against Wales in Cardiff on 19 August and the All Blacks at Twickenham a week later.

TWICKENHAM GAME CRUCIAL FOR CONFIDENCE AND MOMENTUM

That New Zealand game, which will be played two weeks before the RWC clash with Scotland, is looming large as an important date on the Bok calendar. For it will determine what kind of confidence the South Africans, who will be expecting to have Siya Kolisi back as their captain by then, will take into the Marseille game. It may also determine which gear they are engaged in.

The reference to gears is relevant because the Boks are clearly in the wrong gear now. A lot was read into the good win over the Wallabies, but perhaps the enthusiasm was premature. Australian rugby players and coaches have a phobia about the highveld, so in retrospect the Loftus result wasn’t surprising.

The subject of altitude though is a reason to feel particularly alarmed about how poor the Boks were against the Pumas. At altitude, and particularly in Johannesburg, the Boks can consider themselves to have at least a 15 point start against all opponents other than the All Blacks.

Those of us who have watched a lot of international matches at Emirates Airlines Park might have felt we were watching a familiar movie and script for much of Saturday’s final Championship game: The visitors hang in and are competitive for the first hour, then the Boks run riot and put a different gloss on the score in the final 20.

Only this time, admittedly partly due to the yellow card shown to Damian de Allende, we were in for a surprise. Instead of the Boks engaging an extra gear in the last quarter, the South American team did. There was never a danger of the Boks losing, with the final Pumas try coming well after the hooter, but it was nonetheless disturbing to see the South African players look out on their feet in those final minutes.

A WARNING TO ENGLAND TOO

The message to come out of the game, and it was writ large, is that the Boks are going to have find another gear or they could face a repeat of the 2015 opener in Brighton, although this time a shock defeat will have more calamitous consequences than the one to Japan eight years ago had.

Not that the Boks should have been the only World Cup competitor concerned after the Johannesburg game. As bad as the Boks were, skipper Duane Vermeulen was right when he said credit has to be given to Argentina. England, who start their World Cup buildup on Saturday with a match against Wales following what has been described as a gruelling training camp, face the Pumas on the same weekend as South Africa faces Scotland. After watching Michael Cheika’s team come so close at a venue where England have failed since the visit of John Pullen’s team in 1972, England will know they face a tough game.

KIWIS THE MAIN CHALLENGERS TO TOP TWO

Meanwhile it is New Zealand who end the southern hemisphere international season as the main challengers to the top two ranked nations, Ireland and France, with their comprehensive win over the Wallabies at the Melbourne Cricket Ground confirming again that the travails of a difficult 2022 have now been put firmly behind the Kiwis.

There is a return Bledisloe Cup fixture scheduled for this week and while the All Blacks will look to continue their fine-tuning ahead of a tournament where they play the opening game against the hosts on 8 September, the Australians are seeking a miracle. Eddie Jones has seen his team play three and lose three since he returned to the role he vacated in 2005 and on the evidence of the most recent match his luck is unlikely to change any time soon.

WEEKEND CASTLE LAGER RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS

Australia 7 New Zealand 38

South Africa 22 Argentina 21