Blunderboks!

By Gavin Rich

Cape Town - One of the teams on view in this match is in a rebuilding phase and the other one won the World Cup last year and had a massive advantage in experience, but if you were a visitor from Mars you would not have been able to tell which was which.

Certainly on this evidence it is the new-look All Black team, who won through their mastery at the breakdown, that are the team on the up.

After this three try to nil drubbing the Springboks will know that they will have to pull off a miracle if they are to place the Tri-Nations trophy alongside the World Cup they won just 10 months ago.

If the All Blacks were the masters, the Master in Chief was undeniably Richie McCaw.

Springbok coach Peter de Villiers said in the build-up week that he had been encouraged in the recent win in Dunedin by his perception that the All Blacks, when they were behind, had looked to Dan Carter to get them out of jail.

If De Villiers was intimating that the New Zealanders were a one-man team, it backfired horribly yesterday. Carter was never that much of a factor in the first half, when the All Blacks were playing against a tricky wind.

Element

He was well looked after by the Bok defence in that period, but with the winds at their backs in the second, the All Black kicking game was infinitely better, and Carter was in his element.

It was a weird match in terms of goal-kicking, with Carter having an uncharacteristic nightmare in aiming at the posts.

He missed three penalties and a conversion in the first half, and a penalty and two drop-goal attempts in the second.

That said, the Bok centurion Percy Montgomery also had a bad day with the boot, missing two much easier attempts than the ones that Carter fluffed. After a strong first half, Montgomery appeared to lose confidence in his allround game because of these misses, and his 100th game ended early as he was replaced by Frans Steyn.

The All Blacks didn't need to worry about Carter's off-day, not with McCaw around, and the flanker showed how much he had been missed in earlier matches by single-handedly taking the game by the scruff from the kick-off.

McCaw was a massive presence in those early minutes and throughout the game, and it was his little kick ahead that put centre Conrad Smith in for the first try of the match after seven minutes.

The Springbok decision-making did contribute to this score, for a quick throw-in at a defensive lineout led to a troublesome situation which eventually led to the Boks having to clear, and it was from the resultant lineout that the All Blacks scored.

The indications during the week were that the Boks would look to keep it tight and attack only from good field positions, but although their attempts to counter-punch by running from their own territory did nearly lead to a try, the high risk element of this approach was constantly apparent as the All Black mastery at the breakdown led to frequent trouble.

Controlled

The Boks have not looked settled or controlled since De Villiers took over, and this was another of those games where South African fans might have been tearing their hair out in bemusement at what the team was trying to do.

They look like a team between styles, or unsure of what style they should be following, and as a consequence, they appear to be sliding.

De Villiers keeps talking about his team being in a transitory phase and needing to introduce a new way of playing, but you have to question whether this is necessary given that the Boks are world champions.

On Sunday they again lacked the clinical edge they displayed in winning the World Cup.

That is not to say the Boks did not have good moments, and the scrumming, for the second week in succession, was outstanding.

The All Blacks tried several different tactics to blunt the Boks in this phase, but the South Africans never flinched or released their solid platform.

Sadly, however, they could not make anything of the edge they had, and their game was constantly punctuated with elementary errors that kept the Boks from attaining momentum.