Wallabies on song for undefeated spring tour after French win

The weekend’s results lend a certain credibility to Australia’s hopes of going undefeated of the spring tour.

Tevita Kuridrani scores his side’s decisive try during the match between France and Australia at Stade de France.

From an utterly parochial perspective, the weekend’s results lend a certain credibility to Australia’s hopes of putting together an undefeated tour of the northern hemisphere, culminating in a second grand slam. Those results included a narrow win by the Wallabies’ second-string side over France and the All Blacks beating Ireland in a slugfest.

Yet, frankly, a parochial perspective seems utterly indulgent for now, not when one of the game’s highest flyers, South Africa, have death dived all the way to the bottom and their torn and broken fuselage lies scattered all over the landscape.

Italy’s first victory over the Springboks should have been cause for wild celebration, but the fact is that even the Azzurri, while deserving of their victory, didn’t rise to any breathless heights themselves in Florence.

Rather, the game was error-ridden from start to finish and the South African defeat came not so much as a proud nation being ground down by a courageous and feisty upstart, but rather as the inevitable result of a long and lingering terminal illness.

The first diagnosis that something was seriously amiss with SA rugby came with the Rugby Championship defeat by Argentina last year, the Boks’ first loss to the Pumas in the republic.

Then came the loss to Japan at the World Cup, which sent disbelieving Trump-like shockwaves around the globe. The defeat to Ireland in June, another first, was also portrayed as unthinkable, though we know now that Rory Best’s men were just starting to realise how good they could be.

The head shaking continued when the Boks lost to Argentina again, this time in South America, and it was only when they beat a slipshod Wallabies outfit in Pretoria in October that it seemed like any semblance of normality had been restored. Now, of course, it just looks like a wasted opportunity for Australia. As it is, that 18-10 win stands as South Africa’s only success in their past seven Tests.

The South African government has declared that half the Springbok squad for the next Rugby World Cup in Japan in 2019 must be made up of non-whites, which locks the sport into a quota system that looks unworkable. Some 300 South Africans are now playing professional rugby in Europe, with another 45 set to join them.

No doubt the deterioration of the rand has played a huge role financially in that rugby exodus, but the other reality is that the white South Africans are fleeing abroad because they no longer can see a future for themselves as rugby players at home.

It’s the wheel turning full circle to the evils of the apartheid system, except of course that it’s the non-whites who are now the political masters. And while many might feel that whites are only getting their comeuppance, SA rugby must look with envy at SA cricket, which seems to be finding the racial balance in the Proteas in far more harmonious fashion.

While a quota system also applies, the mix of races can be evened out across the season and over the three forms of the game, Tests, ODIs and T20.

And with players of the calibre of Kagiso Rabada, who is on target to become the best fast bowler in the world, and brilliant batsman Temba Bavuma, the first black South African to score a Test century — with many more to come judging by his innings in Perth and Hobart — there is no suggestion whatever of the tokenism that dogs so many rugby selections.

Rugby in South Africa has always been the sport that has stood alone in defying its own government on integration and perhaps it is only now experiencing the problems that other sports have dealt with and moved on. But, right at this juncture, it looks like a grim road ahead for the Springboks and their likeable if embattled coach, Allister Coetzee.

While the Springboks are lurching from bad to worse, the Wallabies are travelling in the opposite direction, from “not so bad” to “pretty good, actually”.

By beating France with a side made up of five regulars and 10 second-stringers, they’ve probably reached the break-even point of their tour, winning three of their five Tests. Now the question is whether they can go all the way and power to a win over Ireland to set up a grand slam thriller in the final tour match against England at Twickenham.

The All Blacks, who normally tend to withhold favours from Australians, for once did the right thing by playing a bruising match against Ireland in Dublin yesterday. Hopefully the Irish casualties, Johnny Sexton, Robbie Henshaw and CJ Stander — one of those 300 South African exiles now playing in Europe — will be cleared to play against the Wallabies next weekend but it will still be a hard ask for Ireland, having to confront the physicality of the two World Cup finalists on successive weekends.

Three of those five regulars, captain David Pocock and halves Will Genia and Bernard Foley, played significant hands in Paris and Australia surely would have lost without them.

But centre Kyle Godwin on debut, run-on debutants, winger Sefa Naivalu and hooker Tolu Latu, and fullback Luke Morahan, making his first run-on appearance since he debuted against Scotland in that horrid foul-weather match in Newcastle in 2012, all would have left coach Michael Cheika pleased with the progress of his attempts to build depth. It may have been the first match Australia ever won without clearing the ball from a single scrum, which surely will have caught the eye of Irish coach Joe Schmidt. Not even when Steven Moore and Scott Sio were injected late in the game did the set piece improve. Indeed, Sio can be thankful he did not concede a penalty in the last scrum of the match.

For the second successive week, Australia escaped with a nailbiting victory and while it was totally out of their control whether Camille Lopez’s last-gasp attempt at field goal succeeded or failed, any close win adds to the character and temperament of this side.

For the moment, the All Blacks remain out of reach and it will take a triumph of self-belief for the Wallabies to storm that castle. But if they can beat the men who beat the All Blacks, perhaps that self-belief will come flooding back.