Jannie du Plessis & Morné Steyn

There was nothing surprising about Springbok flyhalf Morné Steyn focusing on the scrum as he prepared to depart with the squad at the weekend for what will be a testing Australasian leg of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship.

The scrumming was not the only area of concern for the Boks during the June internationals and in the two Championship matches against Argentina.

But it was an aspect that fell short both against Wales and the Pumas, and those who know the South African rugby psyche, will understand the ripple effect that the scrumming humiliation at the hands of Argentina in Salta would have sent through the team.

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Steyn said he backed the scrum, and if his confidence is vindicated, then all the panic that appears to have enveloped the public comment on the Springboks may just be proved premature over the next two weeks. Get the scrum right, and the other aspects should fall into place. Most importantly, the Boks will find some much needed confidence and be able to assert themselves, something they failed to do against Argentina.

The calls for changes to the front-row have mostly fallen on deaf ears for the simple reason that the one position everyone seems to be focusing on, tighthead prop, is not one where the Boks have a long queue of experienced players lining up for selection. Jannie du Plessis looks like he is suffering for being over-played at all levels of the game over the past two years, but will have to soldier on.

The medical doctor from the farming area around Bethlehem in the Eastern Free State is a strong character, so maybe he will deliver now that the more readily identifiable and hated enemy are coming into view in the form of the Australians and Kiwis. He may have to do it though without his brother Bismarck alongside, for the indications are that Adriaan Strauss may well be wearing the No 2 against the Wallabies in the opening match of the tour in Perth on Saturday.

There isn’t anything unusual about that as coach Heyneke Meyer has rotated the two hookers in the past, and it is usually the Australian game, where the scrumming threat is not so great, where Du Plessis gets to wear a double digit on his back rather than the No 2. It is hard to imagine that Meyer would want to do without his physical presence in other areas of the game against the All Blacks, but still, there are enough questions about the scrumming form of the Sharks players in the Bok squad to elicit some doubt.

Of course, the scrum wasn’t the only phase where the Boks struggled against Argentina, and also in the second test against Wales in Nelspruit. The probable return of Victor Matfield should improve the lineout efficiency, but a big test for the Boks will be at the breakdowns when they face the All Blacks. There has been a lot of talk about the need to improve the Bok performances at the breakdown, but in the tests played so far this year it hasn’t been as good as it was at stages of last season.

The All Blacks outplayed the Boks in that aspect of the game in the Championship decider at Ellis Park last year, so there is some work on technique that needs to be done before the side gets to Wellington for a game that, let’s be honest, not many South Africans will be expecting them to win.

A more realistic hope, if the Boks are to challenge New Zealand for the Championship crown, is that they prove better than Australia this week, are competitive in Wellington and then win the two games on South African soil that come after that.

Meyer’s biggest immediate challenge is to arrive at his preferred combinations and then stick with them. There has been a lot of change during the course of this season, and some of the combinations look incongruous. For instance, the midfield pairing of Jean de Villiers and Damian de Allende have played together before, but not in their current configuration of De Villiers at No 12 and De Allende at No 13.

Lood de Jager does not look like a No 5 lock, Juan Smith was selected for last week based on 2010 abilities that have deserted him, and the halfbacks Ruan Pienaar and Handre Pollard didn’t know each other a few weeks ago.

Scrumming does rely on team work, as do the lineouts, so all the mixing and changing that has taken place since last November, when the Bok team had a settled spine, may well have been a contributing factor to the Bok problem areas.

However, it should be noted that what are referred to here are problem areas, and not failures. For hysterical though some of the reaction to their performances against Argentina has been, it does need to be noted that the Boks haven’t failed as yet. They are in fact on an eight match winning run.

This though is the time of year when we start to get some much needed clarity on where the Boks stand. For the first time this year the Boks will be coming up against teams that the South African public and media don’t automatically expect them to beat. For the first time the questions will revolve around whether the Boks will win or not, and not by how much they will win by.

That is a pressure that could be welcomed by coach Meyer, who may have felt he was in a no-win situation against Wales and Argentina.

Poor though they were in periods of those matches, Meyer wasn’t wrong to be proud of the way his men dug themselves out of deep holes to win in Salta and in Nelspruit, and if you look at the record books and see that the Boks have just lost against the All Blacks (4 times) and Wallabies (once), in the last two and a half years, it does appear a winning habit is being established.

Those wins get ignored when achieved against nations South Africans perceive as inferior, but from this week a win by any margin becomes a celebrated event. The record books tell us that beating Australia in Australia is an achievement. The Boks did win well in Brisbane last year, but you can still count the Bok wins Down Under on one hand – 1998, 2005, 2009 and 2013.

And of course any win in New Zealand is remembered as an epic event because it happens so rarely, with 1998, 2008 and 2009 providing the memorable occasions since isolation ended in 1992.

Remaining Springbok Rugby Championship Fixtures:

• 6 September Australia, Perth
• 13 September New Zealand, Wellington
• 27 September Australia, Cape Town
• 4 October New Zealand, Johannesburg