RUGBY CHAMPS PREVIEW: Aussie selection and Argie Lions slayers bring extra edge

The Wallaby squad announcement ahead of their two match tour of South Africa that will kick off the Castle Lager Rugby Championship campaigns for the respective nations was exactly what was needed to drive up global interest in this initial phase of the competition.

That the biggest international clash of the year is set for the third round of the Championship at the beginning of next month is not something anyone needs reminding about.

The Springboks will be in Auckland that day and while they did lose in that city in the buildup to the last World Cup, that game was at Mt Smart. Meaning not Eden Park, which is the real fortress of the All Blacks, as signified by them not having lost there since 1994.

The Boks actually drew there that year, in the last game of the three game series that was won 2-0 by Laurie Mains’ All Blacks against a team coached by the late Ian McIntosh, but that is the closest they have ever come post-isolation.

The game before that was the infamous but incredibly close ‘Flour Bomb’ test on the controversial 1981 tour, where New Zealand clinched the series with a last-gasp Alan Hewson penalty. The players involved with the Boks in that series still haven’t forgiven the Welsh referee Clive Norling for that call.

But while the seismic Eden Park clash is not one that needs extra building up or marketing, the South African/Australia games may do given how far the Wallabies have dropped on the World Rugby rankings at a time when the Boks have been so ascendant.

For the record, the Wallabies have been to South Africa twice in the last six years - they lost 35-17 at Emirates Airlines Park in 2019 and were thumped by an even bigger margin at Loftus two years ago.

The two games played in Australia last year were both won by the Boks, both by a quite comfortable margin. And on both occasions the Boks were fielding experimental teams.

AUSSIES WON A LOT OF ADMIRERS

However, something has changed since then - while the jury will remain out on how good the most recent edition of the British and Irish Lions touring squad was, the Wallabies won a lot of admirers for how tigerishly they fought and how close they came to achieving a series win. But for the call against them in the last move of the middle test, they could have won the rubber.

They were outplayed in the first game even though the margin of defeat was only eight points, so the much improved efforts in Melbourne and then in the win in Sydney can be attributed to one thing - the beefing up of the pack that came with the selection of Will Skelton, a giant of a man who has achieved great success playing in Europe, and in the last test Taniela Tupou, probably Australia’s best prop forward and responsible in a big shift in the balance of power in the scrums.

It was thought that Tupou might not make this tour as he is continuing his career at Racing 92 from the start of the northern hemisphere season, and the Australians do have strict guidelines in place on how many games you have had to play for the national team before you can be eligible to play for the Wallabies while based overseas.


The so-called Giteau Law has changed that a bit, but current Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt was not noted for selecting overseas based players, although an exception was made in the case of Skelton. And now Tupou, although perhaps the argument is that he’s not in France yet.

Whatever the case, the presence of Skelton and Tupou, plus the return of the equally physical Rob Valentini, considerably boosts the Australian chances of being competitive at an Emirates Airlines Park venue they have struggled at since they last won there way back in 1963.

It also brings extra relevance in the sense that many rugby pundits around the world are using the two games the Wallabies will play in South Africa - the second is in Cape Town a week later - as a measurement or indicator of how good the Lions were. If the Wallabies go well here then the Lions’ series win will be seen as more of an achievement.

PUMAS HAVE EARNED RESPECT

Talking of the Lions, there is another team of Lions slayers in the Championship - Argentina. The Los Pumas beat the Lions in Dublin on the eve of their tour and while they slipped a bit against England subsequent to that, the context there is that they rested several of their star players in preparation for the Championship.

The Pumas beat every other team once during last year’s competition and have made a bit of a habit now of shocking the All Blacks so they will be both respected and feared. The barrier they need to go through this year is to back up wins against big teams, something they have failed to do in the past.

For instance last year they edged the Boks in Argentina but then were comprehensively thrashed in Nelspruit, a sequence that tends to be their lot against the All Blacks too.

There is a variation this year when it comes to the Bok games against Argentina - the home game will be in Durban at the end of September but the theatre of conflict then switches to London and South Africa’s home from home, the Allianz Stadium (Twickenham), which is where this year’s edition of the Championship will be concluded on 4 October.

The Boks won the Championship last year and will be eager to emerge as victors again ahead of a tough end of year tour that will include games against Ireland in Dublin and France in Paris.

SPRINGBOK CASTLE LAGER RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP SCHEDULE

August 16: Australia, Johannesburg 5:10pm

August 23: Australia, Cape Town 5:10pm

6 September: New Zealand, Auckland 9:05am

13 September: New Zealand, Wellington 9:05am

27 September: Argentina, Durban 5:10pm

04 October: Argentina, London 3pm