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Boks in sound nick for Oz clash

Comment: Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer

Cape Town - Safely negotiating the toughest pool at the World Cup probably stands South Africa in good stead for their now confirmed quarter-final showdown with Australia next Sunday (07:00 our time).

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Ireland’s thumping, statement-making victory over Italy on Sunday finally ensured that the defending champions would have to meet their Tri-Nations foes in Wellington for the probable right to then play hosts New Zealand - who ought to overcome Argentina shortly afterwards - in the semis.

It is not the route many Bok supporters or the team itself would have ideally wished for, but the players will already have been steeling themselves psychologically for the likelihood of a Wallaby clash for a couple of weeks, following the upset Irish pool win against Robbie Deans’s charges.

Recent history on paper suggests that Australia will have a mental edge over the Boks, given that the last three meetings between the nations have all gone the Wallabies’ way.

But it is a slightly deceptive picture, given the circumstances.
The first of that trio of Aussie wins, for instance, came towards the end of a 2010 Tri-Nations which had been lopsidedly dominated by the All Blacks, and the Wallabies broke a 47-year duck at South African high altitude with a 41-39 win in a crazily helter-skelter affair in Bloemfontein.

Defensive scripts wents AWOL that day - not the sort of thing that tends to happen to a pronounced degree in the knockout stages of World Cups - as the Australians scored five tries to three, but the Boks had staged a comeback of note to hit the lead until Kurtley Beale’s last-ditch penalty from 56 metres decided the match.

This year’s first of two Tri-Nations meetings, in Sydney, featured a raw, decidedly second-string Bok outfit, who were not too surprisingly caught in the headlights and conceded five tries in 54 minutes before limiting the damage to 39-20.

And when the Boks fielded their core customers in the return tussle in Durban, they went toe to toe for an hour before a lack of match fitness at the time took a toll and the Wallabies edged it 14-9.

Since then, South Africa have leapfrogged Australia back to No 2 on the IRB rankings and arguably been better “hardened” for the quarter-final not only because of the generally more taxing rigours of their group as a whole but also by finishing with a useful, reality-check sort of victory over Samoa in a bruising dogfight.

And despite the blow of losing in-form inside centre Frans Steyn for the remainder of the tournament not being one to under-estimate, the Boks seem to have a better overall bill of health at this juncture than several of the other quarter-finalists.

While it is true, too, that Steyn brought some new dimensions to the No 12 shirt - especially with his rugged presence in an important defensive channel - who can say with any firm justification that likely replacement Jean de Villiers, a 30-year-old veteran of 71 Tests with universally respected qualities of his own, will suddenly let the cause down?

Indeed, the scales might be said to be deservedly re-balancing in De Villiers’s favour, given the rotten luck that has bedevilled him at previous World Cups.

It is also not the worst time for the Boks to be taking on Australia, given that the Wallabies have wrestled a bigger catalogue of injury disruptions at this event and thus not been able to keep essential combinations as well-tuned as they would like.

Even so, a titanic battle looms, especially as the opponents should gleefully field their specialist open-side flank David Pocock: he is every bit as important to them as Heinrich Brüssow is to the Bok cause ... and what a one-on-one that promises to be.

The quarter-finals, which incidentally will feature all of the teams currently in the IRB rankings top eight, feature one especially succulent fixture on each day next Saturday and Sunday.

The pick of Saturday’s games - also featuring the rather lifeless England against seemingly strife-torn France - is undoubtedly the one between notably in-form Six Nations foes Wales and Ireland.

And if Sunday’s second match between the All Blacks and Argentina should go pretty comfortable the New Zealand way even with Colin Slade now calling the shots instead of luckless, tourney-sidelined Dan Carter at flyhalf, the RWC champions’ meeting with Australia is enticingly hard to call.

Quarter-final line-up (kick-offs in SA times):

Saturday:

Ireland v Wales, Wellington 07:00
England v France, Auckland 09:30

Sunday:

South Africa v Australia, Wellington 07:00
New Zealand v Argentina, Auckland 09:30
 
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