Weather gives Boks a chance

The home team holds all the aces in terms of first choice international players who boast experience, and they are far more a replica of the side that Australia will field in the big World Cup matches than the South African team is.

Skipper John Smit and maybe Morne Steyn and Danie Rossouw could be part of the first choice run-on lineups in September, but that could depend on how they over the next few weeks, particularly Steyn, who now appears to have dropped below Butch James in the pecking order.

But while Australia look stronger on paper, that means the pressure is squarely on them, for they do have a lot more to lose against a team that is really more a reflection of South African rugby depth than South African rugby strength.

And that is particularly so after the Wallaby defeat to Samoa last week. The Australians were missing a lot of first choice players as Robbie Deans chose the moment of the first game of the season to give his reserves a run, but the loss still sent shock waves reverberating through Australian rugby.

It would have encouraged opposing teams for it showed that the Wallabies are still some way short of being the dominant force at forward that you need to be to be realistic challengers for the World Cup title.

The big guns are back this week and they will be expected to bring some of the pride back by fronting a Bok pack which although second string remains useful and could even be rendered more dangerous by the fact they are considered second string.

And in the wet weather, the forward battle is become even more important, thus introducing the potential of an upset.

We saw in the Reds match against the Stormers in April this year that Will Genia and Quade Cooper can do the tactical kicking job, and do it well, and there was also evidence of that in the recent Super Rugby final. But Cooper in particular, and the Australian team as a whole, are made for an expansive game.

In wet conditions those strengths will be negated. You won’t – or at least you shouldn’t – see the Wallabies running the Boks off their feet like they threatened to do early in last year’s Loftus Tri-Nations test and for the entire first half a week later in Bloemfontein. If they do try it could be suicidal and play into the hands of a Bok team that by all accounts will be adopting a conservative strategy.

And in this instance a conservative approach is the right one, and could give them the same lift in the anticipated conditions that it did when a Bok team that wasn’t quite as depleted as this one but nonetheless looked decidedly makeshift won in the wet against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin last year. Like the Aussies, the Irish rely on a running game and they were lost when the conditions precluded it.

Ruan Pienaar and Steyn were the Bok halfbacks in that match, and they are back again for this one. Both of them are well equipped for wet weather rugby, and that November game was one of Pienaar’s better (as a scrumhalf) in the Bok jersey.

Of course what the Bok No9 and No10 will miss this time is the experienced tight five that played in Dublin – the first choice Sharks front-row, with Bismarck du Plessis at hooker, and Victor Matfield, all played in that game and were the driving force. So the big question centres on the tight five.

Alistair Hargreaves was drafted into the starting team on Thursday to replace the injured Johann Muller, and he will partner young Bulls lock Flip van der Merwe, who picked up quite a bit of experience in his first year of international rugby in 2010.

Smit can do himself and the country a huge favour if he produces over something close to 80 minutes the form he displayed when he came on in the last 20 for the Sharks in their Super Rugby Finals Series qualifier against the Crusaders in Nelson.

If he does, and the youngsters on other side respond to the confidence a big performance from the skipper will bring, then a Bok win is not beyond the realms of possibility, even if it remains the much less likely result.