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Cape Town - The outcome of Saturday’s Rugby Championship Test between Australia and South Africa in Brisbane is a tough one to predict, former Springbok flyhalf Naas Botha believes.
Both teams started the Rugby Championship in unconvincing fashion, with the Wallabies losing two Tests to the All Blacks (42-8, home and 29-9, away) and the Springboks registering one win (30-23, home) and one loss (26-24, away) against Argentina.
“It’s a difficult game to call. Against New Zealand, Australia were extremely poor and against Argentina I don’t think we were a lot better,” the former Bok captain said in a radio interview on The Sports Cage.
“I thought we could have lost the first international quite easily, we did lose the second one. It’s a very difficult game to try and find positives because both teams are struggling.
“And if you go back to Super 18 form, apart from the Lions, we had a very indifferent Super 18 campaign and if you look at Australia, I think they had their worst campaign in a very long time.
“So it’s two teams trying to find form. In the old days we would have gone there and say ‘at least we knock we can win this one’…”
Botha, who played 28 Tests for South Africa between 1980 and 1992, feels the Boks have the better team, but he’s not confident in them claiming a win.
“I still believe we’ve got the better personnel on the field. We should beat them, but that’s what I said before the second game against Argentina and we never did that.
“It’s really time now for everybody to step up.”
