SCENE SETTER: Schmidt adds extra layer to Bok challenge

After a few weeks hiatus the world champions Springboks are back in action on Saturday as they visit one of their least favoured venues at the start of their quest to end what can be considered a bizarre poor record on Australian soil.

While the Boks have won two Rugby World Cups in succession away from home, and the Wallabies failed to even make it out of the pool phase in the most recent global showpiece event in France last year, South Africa’s history in Australia since the end of isolation puts the brakes on installing them as the overwhelming favourites they should be. The Boks have won just once in their last nine starts Down Under.

With the games on Australian soil being played in the afternoon, Saturday’s first clash at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium will kick off at 6.45am South African time, with the following week’s game in Perth set for an 11.45 start. The Boks have a comparatively better record in Perth than they do in Brisbane, but will want to get their Castle Lager Rugby Championship campaign off to a strong start by winning both games.

Which they should be expected to do given the disparity in the respective world rankings of the teams, with the Boks at No 1 and Australia at No 9 and currently listing below even Italy. The Boks won handsomely in last year’s one-off Championship match, with Kurt-Lee Arendse scoring three tries in a 43-12 triumph, thus starting the rot for Eddie Jones in his second stint as Wallabies coach, but that game was in Pretoria, where the South Africans have an excellent record against the Aussies.

EXPECTATIONS ON SA SHOULD BE HIGH

Given the huge chasm shown in that game between the respective forward packs in particular, it shouldn’t really matter where the game is played for there to be an expectation of a Bok win. And with coach Rassie Erasmus hinting that he will use these two games to strengthen his depth, meaning there could be an experimental element to the selection, the South Africans clearly think the same.

The team for Saturday will be announced from Brisbane late morning on Tuesday, but Erasmus is right when he says there isn’t that much difference these days between a first and second string team, and there are enough players with sufficient international experience in the wider squad to accommodate newcomers without it being a massive risk.

Certainly the Boks, after another World Cup triumph and further frontiers having been crossed in the interim, are a different animal to the one that last lost to the Wallabies, which was at the Adelaide Oval in the first game of a similar two game trip in 2022.

The Boks lost by eight points (25-17) in a game where there were several controversial moments where the rub of the green went against the visitors, in particular an illegal tackle from wing Marika Koroibete that wasn’t sanctioned and prevented a certain try for his opposite number Makazole Mapimpi.

And then, lest it forgotten, there was also the ridiculous yellow card shown to Bok scrumhalf Faf de Klerk after Wallaby No 9 Nic White milked the situation after a harmless attempt to get the ball was interpreted as an intentional slap in the face.

SCHMIDT THINKS BOKS BENEFIT FROM CLOSE CALLS

The Boks have certainly been on the wrong end of some debatable calls in Australia over the years, which partly but not completely explains their poor record there. However, Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt has told the Australian media that it is currently the Boks getting the better of the calls in close games.

While praising the Boks after their drawn home series against the world’s No 2 team, Ireland, Schmidt made it clear that his former team (he coached Ireland at the 2019 World Cup) may have been unlucky.

“South Africa, they look pretty impressive. The level and intensity of that Irish series, it was entertaining,” he told reporters.

“I think most people would have been entertained by the one-score results, and particularly Ciaran Frawley nailing those two late drop-goals to win the second test. (But) There was a bit of controversy with James Lowe’s try being disallowed. It’s not the first time for South Africa, they tend to get a bit of luck from that perspective.

“They don’t need too much luck to fall their way, they make a lot of their own luck with the quality of player and the connectedness they have,” he added.

What may have changed for the Boks since the Adelaide game in 2022 is that they have started to evolve towards a more inclusive style and away from the more conservative style that they employed then. Even before Tony Brown arrived as their attack coach, the Boks were embracing a more attacking style that started in the close loss to France in Marseille in November 2022.

When the sides played in Adelaide in August of that year the switch hadn’t been flicked yet. With the Boks not bothering the scoreboard operators as much with tries in those days, refereeing an TMO errors and just sheer bad luck would have had more chance of impacting the result than might be the case in an era where the Boks should be creating more scoring opportunities.

WALLABY COACH KNOWS RASSIE WELL

For his part Schmidt, who knows Erasmus well after working with him when he was Ireland coach and Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber were at Munster, doesn’t believe the Boks have moved away from their DNA to the extent many think they have.

“I’m not sure there’s too much difference. I’ve worked with Jacques and Rassie when they were at Munster and I was with Ireland,” said Shmidt.

“I know them both well and they’re very tight. Jacques and Rassie would have worked closely together. With Rassie continuing, there would have been the same emphasis in the manner in which they do things.

“They’re certainly defending in a very similar way. It will be more of the same. They really try to put pressure on, whether they have the ball or whether they don’t.”

UNKNOWN QUALITY

The presence of Schmidt in the dug-out is the caveat to the view that the current order of things should automatically translate into a Bok win. He introduces an unknown quality. The Wallabies weren’t brilliant in the series win over Wales that started off the Schmidt tenure as their coach and they were workmanlike rather than spectacular against Georgia, but Schmidt does have plenty of experience at plotting against the Boks.

The New Zealander was in the All Black dug-out when they lost to the Boks in the World Cup final last October, but he will have happy memories of being the first Ireland coach to win on South African soil (Cape Town 2016) and also presided over the big Ireland win in Dublin in 2017.

The Boks though did correct after their Adelaide defeat in 2022, winning comfortably (24-8) at the Sydney Football Stadium a week later, thus ending an eight game winless sequence (there was one draw), and they will be expected to do something similar as their Championship campaign gets underway.

Champions New Zealand start their campaign by hosting Argentina at the Sky Stadium in Wellington later in the morning SA time.

Castle Rugby Championship fixtures this weekend (both Saturday)

Australia v South Africa (Brisbane, 6:45am)

New Zealand v Argentina (Wellington, 09:05am)