“I think I may have a chat with him, but just to see if there are any issues that he is concerned about and that may have been brought up,” said Deans.

The experienced New Zealander though has been too long in the business not to place a much higher premium on that “chat” than he let on at a press conference at the Australian team hotel. And if he was being serious, he may have taken a different view had he been at the Springbok press conference at another Cape Town hotel an hour earlier. Springbok vice-captain and star lock Victor Matfield was asked about the rolling maul that the Boks had employed so effectively in the first test against the All Blacks in Bloemfontein, but which was not so much in evidence in Durban last week.

“We were not allowed by the law (interpretation) to drive as much as we wanted to last week, we just couldn’t get it set and there was much pulling it down, but hopefully with the same referee as we had in the first test we will be allowed to get it going again,” said Matfield.

Matfield is right, Alain Rolland is back to referee again, and maybe he won’t be as affected by whatever it was that All Black coach Graham Henry said to Nigel Owens before the Durban test about the Bok rolling maul that prompted the Boks to put it away. Or maybe he just has a different interpretation to the Welshman.

Deans, who arrived in South Africa late following the death of his father in New Zealand, made the contention that “it is the same game and the same laws”, but the reality is that interpretations of those laws vary from referee to referee.

And whether it is the maul and how much he allows the South Africans to get men between the defenders and the ball and at what angle, his interpretation of the breakdowns or his reading of the battle that is enacted in the dark dungeon of the scrum, Rolland will have an impact. It is just the way that it is.

The scrum has been the area of contention for the Boks this week, with coach Peter de Villiers exerting his own form of media pressure on the referee by suggesting that the Wallabies are happier to play for a penalty in the scrums rather than get involved in a full scrumming confrontation.

It was met with the predictable rebuffs from the Aussies, but Deans, perhaps because he is a New Zealander and has been on the opposite side of Australian wile at scrum-time, was clear about what needed to be done to prevent the scrumming penalties with which the All Blacks were able to punish his team three weeks ago: “We need to wise up,” he said.

The concept of wisdom, and using guile, is an important one in relation to this game, for if there is one thing everyone agrees on when comparing Australia with New Zealand it is that Stirling Mortlock’s men are cleverer and wiser.

Which is going to make the Wallaby attempts to overcome the Springbok kick and suffocate approach particularly interesting, for not everyone is taking the Australian coaching staff’s word at face value when they say they are going to front the Boks physically.

But one thing you can expect the Australians to do is play much more controlled rugby than the All Blacks did, and it is true that they possess the kicking game that the New Zealanders lacked. They should also be a lot less panicked at the prospect of taking on the Springbok lineout, a phase where they are themselves highly rated, if not quite as highly at this juncture of rugby history as their opponents.

The Wallabies in Berrick Barnes have an inside centre who has flyhalf experience, and is thus a genuine playmaker, and the Australians also couldn’t possibly be as poor with their basic skills as New Zealand were.

There again, there was a theory that the Kiwi skills breakdown last week was because of the intense pressure placed on them by the physicality of the South Africans and the precision of their kick and chase tactics. If the Wallabies go walkabout in the same way, we shall know the answer.

The thing about kick and chase is that if you get it wrong it can go horribly wrong, and the Australians will be hoping that the Boks are just that little bit off their game on Saturday so they have a gap to exploit. With the prize of an unbeaten home leg looming large, it is unlikely however that the Boks will be complacent or lethargic, which is why they should be expected to win.

Teams

South Africa: Frans Steyn, JP Pietersen, Jaque Fourie, Jean de Villiers, Bryan Habana, Morne Steyn, Fourie du Preez, Pierre Spies, Juan Smith, Heinrich Brussow, Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, John Smit (captain), Bismarck du Plessis, Beast Mtwarira.

Reserves: Chiliboy Ralepelle, Jannie du Plessis, Andries Bekker, Danie Rossouw, Ricky Januarie, Ruan Pienaar, Adrian Jacobs.

Australia: Adam Ashley-Cooper, Lachie Turner, Stirling Mortlock, Berrick Barnes, Drew Mitchell, Matt Giteau, Luke Burgess, Wycliff Palu, George Smith, Richard Brown, Nathan Sharpe, James Horwill, Al Baxter, Stephen Moore, Benn Robinson.

Reserves: Tatafu Polota-Nau, Ben Alexander, Dean Mumm, David Pocock, Will Genia, Peter Hynes, James O’Connor.

Referee: Alain Rolland (Ireland).

Kick-off: 5pm SA time.

Prediction: Boks to win.

Source:  supersport.co.za