Perfect opportunity for the Boks to break Aussie hoodoo
THE current Springboks are probably unaware of it but the only other time they have played a match in Adelaide was in 1971 when they smashed South Australia 49-0.
Hannes Marais’ Boks won all 13 matches on their tour that year, including three Test wins, and Siya Kolisi’s men need all the good omens they can get given the dreadful record on Australian soil that they are addressing this week, and at a venue that is not a rugby union stronghold.
Since readmission in 1992, the Springboks have beaten the Wallabies five times in 32 matches in Australia, the same number of victories they have over the All Blacks in New Zealand over the same period, and that just doesn’t make sense.
It is puzzling because the All Blacks have been a far better team than the Wallabies over the decades, and New Zealand is the toughest place on the planet for rugby tourists.
It is for that reason the Boks always arrive in New Zealand seething with battle lust and conversely they land in Australia mentally switched off because their subconscious says the opposition is not in the same league as their Antipodean cousins.
This was perfectly illustrated last year when the Boks played poorly against the Wallabies on successive weekends (losing both) and then played out of their boots in back-to back matches against the All Blacks (winning one and losing one)
The Boks are back in Australia for Rugby Championship matches on Saturday and next week in Sydney, and addressing the mental weakness they display against the Wallabies is a psychological box they must tick ahead
of the World Cup next year.
Interestingly, the Wallabies have managed only the same number of wins in South Africa. It is almost as if the two teams have settled into a routine in which they win their home games against each other only.
An example of the mental dip that Springboks teams perennially suffer Down Under was in 2009 when John Smit’s (almost) all-conquering side beat the British and Irish Lions and then the All Blacks three times, including a Tri-nations clincher in Hamilton, but their one loss that year was in Brisbane to a very average Wallabies team.
The Boks mentally took their foot off the gas for that one match, and too often that has been the case when they hit Australian soil.
Bok coaches and captains have tried to make sense of the under-performance in Australia and the consensus is that it has nothing to do with consciously under-estimating the Aussies but more a case of instinctively failing to “get up” for the Wallabies as they do for the All Blacks.
With respect to Australia, the All Blacks are the Boks’ oldest and most bitter rivals and invariably the Kiwis are the No 1 team in the world, so the Boks will automatically raise their game against them.
The Aussies can offer the same reason for their equally poor record in South Africa given their passionate Bledisloe Cup rivalry with the Kiwis …
Also, over the decades of the Tri-nations and the Rugby Championship, the Boks’ overseas tour has always involved stops in New Zealand and Australia, and perhaps they have been guilty of playing their “cup final” in New Zealand and not being at the same level of intensity in Australia.
But this year the Boks have already had their battles with the All Blacks, and having lost so disappointingly at Ellis Park, Siya Kolisi’s men have a great opportunity to halt the trend and win in Australia, and on successive weekends to hammer home the point.
Last week’s crushing loss means the Boks surely could not be in a hungrier mood and they must now produce the mental toughness of champions if they are to climb another rung on the ladder to true world domination.