Mike Greenaway: Different side on brown grass of home

The Bull Ring, or Loftus Versfeld, is the venue for tomorrow's Tri-Nations match between New Zealand and South Africa.

It is also home to the Blue Bulls, a team both loved and loathed.

Their supporters in this northern province are fanatical to the last breath but to many others they are an anachronism, a dinosaur that won't evolve.

Their detractors are annoyed that the Bulls' regressive style of rugby still wins them nearly all of their matches in Pretoria and these same sceptics gleefully point out how relatively ineffectual the Bulls are overseas. The further you take them from Loftus the worse they get.

The Bulls, formerly known as Northern Transvaal, have dominated the Currie Cup over the past 20 years and it has long been said that when the Bulls are strong, so too are the Springboks.

It follows that there is almost always a Bulls imprint on the Springboks, both in uninspiring pattern of play and psyche.

What is it with a mentality that has the Boks (and the Bulls) transform from bully boys to shrinking violets the moment they get on an plane?

The Boks have not won in New Zealand since 1998, they have beaten the Wallabies just twice in Australia in 11 years of Tri-Nations rugby, they have lost their last five games against England at Twickenham and have not won in France since 1997.

But the Boks' home record against these teams, apart from the All Blacks, is excellent.

And you need no reminding of the appalling record of South African touring teams in the Super12/14.

There is no question that South African teams thrive on their home comforts but take them out of their comfort zone and they deflate like a popped balloon.

To understand this phenomenon you have to understand the "laager" or siege mentality of South Africans, notably Afrikaners, and also their troubled history on this isolated tip of Africa. Ingrained in the South African psyche is a sense of "us against the world".

At home, among their own kind, there is reassurance that promotes boldness and arrogance but overseas this gives way to an inferiority complex and homesickness.

The problem is all the more significant when you consider that the confrontational style of play of South African teams is fuelled by passion, which is easily manufactured in the maddening environment of Ellis Park or Loftus Versfeld, but is hard to come by when there is 16,000km between the Boks and the high veld.

And the do-or-die attitude swells all the more when the Boks face adversity.

The term laager originated 200 years ago when the Boers were trekking through the wilderness of the interior after having elected to move from Cape Town and British rule. When attacked by indigenous tribes, the trekkers would form a laager or circle with their wagons and, drawing support and comfort from each other, they would see off the besiegers.

Not much has changed, and Bok captain John Smit acknowledges this.

"It is very easy to lift a Bok team that has been written off by everybody," he says. "The blood-and-guts effort comes easy to our players. Our players seem to be most comfortable when their backs are against the wall. Getting our players to deliver on their potential when the pressure is not quite as intense remains a serious problem."

Well, the pressure has seldom been heavier. The Boks have lost four tests in a row - one against France in late June and then three in the Tri-Nations. They have been ridiculed and castigated in equal measure, but at long last they are on the brown, brown grass of home.

The atmosphere is perfect for the Springboks, and they are likely to win, but in this season where they have perished miserably overseas, what will it prove other than that nothing has changed in the South African psyche?

Mike Greenaway is chief rugby writer at the Natal Mercury in Durban.