ABs must fire first-up at RWC
If Kiwi rugby fans thought the All Blacks and Springboks flew at each other like wild men in Pretoria and Wellington, just wait until they start flexing their muscles in Yokohama next year.
That’s when the gloves will be left in the rubbish bin.
The bruises and scrapes, and in the case of flanker Sam Cane a fractured neck bone, may still be causing some All Blacks major discomfort in the wake of the remarkable 32-30 win over the Springboks at Loftus Versfeld last Sunday, but it’s the pending Rugby World Cup scrap between the two monsters of the rugby world that is already starting to occupy some minds.
On September 21, the All Blacks and Springboks, the top seeds in Pool B, will meet in their first game of the Rugby World Cup.
Losing wouldn’t be the end of the world. But the path towards the final will undeniably be less treacherous for the team that emerges victorious.
It pays not be too cocky at a global tournament and the Springboks will never forget their 34-32 defeat to Japan, in their pool game at the 2015 tournament.
Yet it seems safe to assume the All Blacks and Springboks will graduate ahead of Italy, Namibia and and a yet-to-be determined repechage winner from their pool, to qualify for the sudden-death phase.
Defeat doesn’t bear thinking about at a World Cup. Not in a pool game. Certainly not in a playoff.
To finish as the Pool B runner-up will come at a cost. It will probably force the loser of the All Blacks-Springboks match to confront Ireland – the expected winners of Pool A – in the quarterfinals.
That will be like diving into shark-infested waters. Ireland, the Six Nations champions, are at short odds to emerge as the top qualifiers ahead of Scotland, Japan, Russia and Samoa from Pool A. Given the Irish have won 19 of their last 23 tests and are No. 2 in the World Rugby rankings behind the All Blacks, they deserve the utmost respect.
The Irish are expected to be dangerous and well organised — they are proving to be one of those teams who are quite happy to play without the ball and back their defence. It’s the sort of footy that suits sudden-death games.
Ireland’s New Zealand coach Joe Schmidt will have learned lessons from the 2015 global tournament in England and Wales, when his team tumbled out in the quarterfinals with a loss to Argentina in Cardiff.
The winner of Pool B will meet the Pool A runner-up, likely to be Scotland. A good team, but Ireland are better, and have proved it.
Given the All Blacks have won the last two World Cups, and have topped the World Rugby rankings for the last nine years, it would require a calamitous drop in form for them to not advance out in the early stages, but it’s how they go about it that matters.
Under new coach Rassie Erasmus the Springboks have discovered the ingredient that is required to succeed in international footy — self belief.
The 36-34 win over the All Blacks in Wellington was clearly no fluke. With a touch more composure, and maybe Erasmus regrets several of the substitutions he made late in the test in Pretoria, the Springboks could have inflicted successive losses on the world champions.
Next year the Springboks and All Blacks will meet just once, with the Rugby Championship pared back to accommodate the World Cup.
Then it’s on to Yokohama. As the Springboks proved in 2015, when they rebounded from their early loss to Japan to advance, and eventually succumbed 20-18 to the All Blacks in a nail-biting semifinal, the good teams don’t curl up when faced with adversity. But it’s always nice to take the easier path. Ireland won’t be there to provide any comfort.
They certainly never did when they last met the All Blacks on neutral soil in Chicago. It was 40-29 that day. To the men in green.