Bloody Ozzies

As Frik du Preez might have said: We take their line-out ball, we smash them in the scrums, we kill them in the rucks, but the score still says Ozzies.

Keo had a lot to say about it in his column: “I haven’t met a South African rugby supporter who didn’t tell New Zealanders that the Boks made it to Paris on October 20 2007 and the All Blacks didn’t.” Do we actually pay this guy to gloat at us? But agreed it was not much different from the All Blacks losing to France in 2007.

The simple fact is that the Boks failed to convert their opportunities on the day. They lost. It hurt. We will seldom throw away a better opportunity to put the Wallabies away in a knock-out game at the World Cup. And that hurts even more.

What I disagree with is all the self-righteous bullshit about what went wrong — as if anyone had the answers. If Bismarck HAD started and the Boks lost, then someone would have said it was wrong to play without the trusted captain. What should we have learnt from Wales? They were the better side and yet we won. We applied the same format to the Wallabies, smashed them in every compartment yet lost on the proverbial roll of a dice.

The Boks sent as good a team as we have ever had to the World Cup; they were neither too old or lacked motivation. On the day they simply didn’t convert. And that really hurts, aka New Zealand 1995, 2007.

It’s what makes the RWC so interesting …

I would have done only one thing differently, and that’s substitute Habana for Hougaard or Aplon. Habana had no form for more than three years. Where he used to ghost into impossible spaces, he now bludgeons blindly into closed doors.

It is such a shame. The Wallabies were poor and won. The All Blacks are looking vulnerable. I hope Wales make the final and win but my money remains on the All Blacks.

Peter Church’s new novel Bitter Pill is being launched in Johannesburg on November 2. www.bitterpill.co.za