Three games to get ready for All Blacks

ASouth African rugby supporter is mostly a very forgiving specimen. Just as well. Whereas Springbok coach Allister Coetzee wasn’t on most of their wishlist and calls were made for his head to roll last year, it just took three Test matches to forgive him.

The 3-0 series whitewash over France in June yet again installed great belief in the national side; evident in how the crowds have expanded from 30 000 at Loftus Versfeld, to 40 000 at King’s Park in Durban and finally over 55 000 at Ellis Park.

And early indications this week in Port Elizabeth suggest the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium will take up every single of the 46 000 available seats, despite gale-force winds and a rainstorm which covered the Friendly City over Wednesday night going into yesterday morning.

And the local scribes here tell me a packed Bay Stadium is one of the best experiences one can be part of.

But as members from the Bok management team warned this week that the team can’t bask in the glory of the French series win, as Argentina and the Rugby Championship would offer different and much sterner challenges.

There has been a series of opinions why the Boks have failed to win the Championship for eight years – in fact New Zealand have dominated the competition to such an extent that the name could just as well be changed from Rugby Championship to the All Black Championship.

The Boks have just tomorrow’s Test against the Pumas, the return Test next week in Salta, and the away match in Perth against Australia before they meet the All Blacks again in Albany on September 16.

So basically they have just three more Tests to build the confidence needed to take on the men in black.

Will they be ready? Maybe not now, but in three, to four weeks’ time they might be.

It depends on what they can show us in the next month for fans to start believing again that the All Blacks can be beaten again.

Not by Ireland or the British Lions, but by the Boks.

But for now it’s baby steps. It’s no use starting planning for the old enemy if we struggle to hold our own against Los Pumas.

Coetzee has suffered two big defeats against the All Blacks thus far, but that was last year. Point duly taken.

But it’s high time we make new memories.