A win, we’ll take it!

The faithful will be ecstatic, the doubters unconvinced as the Springboks retained their record of never having lost to the All Blacks in Port Elizabeth on Saturday.

It was 41 years since Dawie de Villiers’s Springbok team smashed All Black dreams on the unyielding ground at Boet Erasmus, but I am sure that Hannes Marais, PE’s finest son, would have approved of the way the current team went about their work at the packed 48 000-seater Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.

They scrummed, they tackled (and scrambled) and they converted every opportunity. If defence wins World Cups, then the Boks remain in the running. Despite 23 line breaks by the All Blacks, they were able to score only once, the same story for the Wallabies last week.

I tempered last week’s defeat hysteria by saying that it could have gone either way. Likewise I caution against widespread elation, despite the trumpeting Sunday Times headline: “That’s the way, Boks.” The All Black side lacked a number of key players. They botched any number of try-scoring opportunities. Television match official Johan Meeuwesen’s “would you like more information?” gem was about as telling as the drunk Free State spectator’s tackle on Western Province’s FC Smit. Graham Henry’s response, “If it was a forward pass, it shouldn’t have been a try” was admirable. One wonders what PDV and his merry men would have had to say if the roles had been reversed in a game in New Zealand?

The bald truth is that the Boks are Tri-Nations wooden spoonists. They were hammered overseas and lost a rare home game against Australia. And alarmingly they scored just three tries in the tournament, none in the last two. All the Springbok tries were scored by hookers — that’s one for the obscure questions quiz book.

In “Will the castle crumble when the old guard changes”, I discussed the importance of a succession plan. It is interesting to note that it is the new blood who are looking the part of a winning formula: Bismarck du Plessis, Patrick Lambie (until he went off) and Henirich Brüssow.

But a win is a win and there is a quiet optimism brewing. Maybe PDV does have a plan? Certainly none of his current squad are contenders for this Springbok team.