Worse than the Springbok performance in Brisbane was the post match analysis on SuperSport, writes Keo in his weekly Business Day column.

Naas Botha blamed the referee Wayne Barnes for South Africa’s emphatic 21-6 defeat against Australia and to illustrate his point he laboured through a couple of debatable decisions at the breakdown. Then Botha spoke about the two Australian tries and the four times Australia’s players crossed South Africa’s line, only to be denied by stunning cover tackles. Not once did Botha show us a South African try or a South African try-scoring opportunity because there wasn’t a heck of a lot to show from a South African perspective.

Australia could have had six tries. South Africa, at best, were close to scoring once. That is how convincing this Australian win was. The Boks, three years ago, took a 49-0 drubbing at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane and had everything gone Australia’s way on Saturday the result could have been of a similar nature.

The SunCorp Stadium has never been kind to the Springboks in matches against Australia, with the Boks having last scored a try at the venue against the Aussies in 1997. They scored plenty there against Samoa during the 2003 World Cup, but when it comes to playing the Wallabies in Brisbane the Boks have managed six, nine, zero and six points in the last decade, while the hosts have totaled 32, 29, 49 and 21.

History always favoured the Wallabies in Brisbane, where the only team to have won there in the last 10 years is New Zealand. Form was also decisive, as was Australia’s team selection, which was an improvement on who started in Perth seven days earlier.

A week ago I cautioned against writing off Australia and wrote that they were not half as bad as their media made out after the 32-25 defeat in Perth. I watched that match three times and the more I watched it the more worried I got about the prospect of Brisbane. It did not need hindsight to know that Brisbane would be very different to Perth.

In Perth Australia never recovered from a 12-point deficit, but they controlled the last 30 minutes of the Test and in particular they were impressive in the scrum. What they lacked was a lineout and physicality in the contact areas. In Brisbane the lineout still wobbled, but the physicality was greater than anything the Springboks have experienced in the Tri Nations this year and the Australian scrum was as good as it was in Cape Town and Perth.

Decisively, the Australians maintained this physical onslaught for the duration of the match and when a Bok team does not physically dictate they tend to struggle.

Anyone blaming Barnes’s officiating is insulting Australia’s performance.

As far a game plans go, South Africa got it wrong and Australia got it boringly right. The hosts played the percentages, kicked for territory and rarely attacked from within their half. Matt Giteau kicked a drop goal and James O’Connor scored from a kick and chase.

When South Africa did it in Cape Town, the criticism Down Under was they were boring. When Australia did it, they were just being clever. What is disappointing about Brisbane is that the Boks were suckered into playing a more expansive and risky game, which favoured the Australians, who in turn played risk-free rugby and got the rewards.

The Springboks, outstanding in the first four Tri Nations victories, will win the Tri Nations, regardless of the result in Hamilton because New Zealand does not have the capacity to score four tries against the Boks and four tries against the Wallabies a week later.

But the taste of championship victory will be soured if there is another defeat in Hamilton, and another set piece disaster will force the selectors to revisit their view on John Smit’s future as an international tighthead prop.

Smit, South Africa’s greatest captain and one of the finest hookers in the game, has taken a beating in the scrum against Australia this year. He should not be playing tighthead. If you play him, start him at hooker, which is his best position.

It won’t happen this weekend and Smit will again be a target, when not long ago he was a strength in the front row. With France waiting in Toulouse in November I can’t see the selectors playing two hookers in the front row, and if they do they should be the ones getting the chop.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Springboks, Tri-Nations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.