Can Australia double up?10 months is barely enough time for a woman to give birth let alone a coach’s shelf life, but for South Africa and Pieter de Villiers Saturday could signal a full-cycle.
De Villiers has grasped the ELVs like a five-year-old attempting trigonometry. Furthermore, claims that senior players are picking the team and choosing tactics serves to illustrate just how sorely John Smit’s orientation has been missed.
The Boks coach has been taking aim at the IRB, but in reality, the missiles are locked and loaded on South Africa in Durban for another defeat against Australia is likely to force the board’s hand.
Rather than backs against the wall, the Springboks are cornered. Imagine carrying a pregnant walrus on your back and you get the gist.
Angry animals, Schalk Burger, Pierre Spies and Juan Smith have been marauding around the patch like toothless tigers and really struggled against the hungrier fetchers such as Richie McCaw and George Smith with their turnover count mirroring the rise in Oil prices.
The Springboks have attacked the ruck like a dingy approaching a giant waterfall - all too quickly and unexpectedly.
So for South Africa, Plan A must be the Wallaby scrum. Waiting for Australia to scrum-down carries that same painful inevitability of impending doom.
Arresting the early advantage and mixing it up should be the priority because they have been far too predictable and picked off like flies by more structured imagination - it’s not like working out the square root of 23716.
The aviophobic Australians haven’t won on their travels in their last 15 Test matches and you have to go as far back as 2000 to register their last win in South Africa.
Playing at sea level will help with the dizziness of foreign playing heights and Deans would’ve ensured the team doctor packed plenty of travel-sickness tablets in their allocation.
While de Villiers learns about team selection and the new laws, maybe, just maybe, the Springboks can start playing like world champions.
A win in Durban won’t come courtesy of mastering the variations, it’ll be about resurrecting the performance standards from Dunedin.
Not such trouble for Deans, for an improbable away victory would set up a winner takes all clash with the All-Blacks in Brisbane. For the sake of the tournament, let’s hope so