Durban - It will be a case of once bitten twice shy for the Springbok forwards when they pack down in the set scrums against the Wallabies in Adelaide on Saturday because none of them have forgotten the pain of the scrum penalty that was the difference between winning and losing last year’s match in Brisbane.
The Wallabies are almost always outgunned up front by the heavier Boks, but they make up for that with a host of crafty scrumming tricks, and in the game in question, they forced a scrum penalty at the end of the match which Quade Cooper goaled for a surprise 26-24 defeat of the world champions.
After suffering that heartbreaking defeat, the Boks fell apart the following week against the same team and lost heavily.
The pressure is now on for the Boks to turn around their abysmal record in Australia.
“We learned quite a lot out of that,” prop Vincent Koch said in an online media conference.
“It was the last scrum of the game, which unfortunately cost us dearly. We know what they are going to bring, and we know they are clever, but our main focus is on ourselves. We want to improve and if we focus on that, it will definitely pay off on Saturday.”
In those defeats last year in Queensland, Koch came on for Frans Malherbe at tighthead and this will again be the case with Koch in a Bomb Squad that has a different feel to it, with there being three backs on the bench this time and the forward quota dropping to five.
But Koch says the Bomb Squad will still be effective.
“I don’t think it has a massive impact,” Koch explained.
“Each player in the Bomb Squad has a certain role, whether it’s a six-two or a five-three. We all know what to do when we get on to the field. The dynamics won’t change much. We just have to perform and keep the intensity where the starters finished off.”
The Aussies will have noted how the Bok line-out creaked against the All Blacks at Ellis Park and line-out general Lood de Jager says the problem has been addressed.
“Firstly, credit must be given to the All Blacks; they came with a good plan to disrupt our throw and it worked. We need to be better with our Plan B for when things go wrong,” the 60-cap veteran said.
“There was a combination of things that went wrong, not one specific reason and we have looked at it as a pack and hopefully we will be more versatile and produce a much better performance.”
De Jager said he was puzzled about the Boks’ lack of success in Australia.
“It is a strange one. It is not necessarily that we underestimate them or treat them any differently than New Zealand ... I just think maybe it is their style of play over the years that we struggle to get to grips with.
“But whatever it may be, we now have an opportunity to change things and instead of looking back in history we must look forward to Saturday and doing something special ... something that not a lot of Bok teams have done in Australia,” De Jager continued. “So we are looking forward to that.”
De Jager added that the Springbok preparations for this week’s match are a far cry from the ordeal the team went through last year when they had to spend two weeks in strict isolation on arrival in Australia.
“Last year we had a tough quarantine period and it is good to be back to normal here in Australia in such a lovely city. And there are a lot of South African people here to support us ... We had a great welcome at the airport and hopefully, we can respond with a winning performance.”
IOL Sport