Of course it was disappointing to lose to the All Blacks – again. Of course it was heartbreaking to come so close – again.
Call me an optimist if you want, I’m certainly not as pessimistic about the Springboks’ chances at the World Cup as I was a few months ago.
Now, I’m not saying the Boks don’t have work to do, but at a World Cup anything is possible and the Boks stand as good a chance as New Zealand, or Australia, or Wales, or England, of winning it.
At the World Cup, you really just have to win three games to be crowned champions. Such is the nature of the showpiece that all but a few of the major nations will feature in the quarter-finals. Then it’s two games to win the title. Of course the Boks are good enough to win three games in a row. If they will, is another matter, but there’s no reason why they can’t.
The form of our Super Rugby teams was disappointing this year and there were some serious question marks about a number of players, but many of those men have shown in the last three matches they still have a lot to offer the Boks. With a little more luck and with a stronger bench, the Boks could just as easily have beaten Australia and New Zealand.
In fact, in their last two matches the Boks dominated proceedings and had their opponents on the back foot. They simply need to find a way to do so for 80 minutes. I’m convinced that with a host of players returning to action in the next few weeks, Heyneke Meyer’s team will be far stronger than what he’s fielded in the Rugby Championship so far.
As good as the loose-forwards have been, imagine how much more potent they’d be if Duane Vermeulen was around, imagine Pieter-Steph du Toit or Lood de Jager coming off the bench, imagine Schalk Burger or Willem Alberts being the impact players, imagine Jesse Kriel coming on with 20 minutes to go.
Much of the talk in the last two weeks has been about how Australia and New Zealand’s replacements are as good, if not better, than the men they replace; the Boks not so. Well, with several formerly injured men set to return, the Boks might just end up having the strongest matchday 23 of all the teams. And that may just be what they’ll need to get them to the 80th minute on the right side of the result.
The Boks may have come up short against Australia and New Zealand recently, but I don’t for one second believe they won’t be a threat when they get to the World Cup and, potentially, come up against these teams again.
They’ll be in it, for sure. - The Star