KEY POINTS:
South Africa will surely take a stranglehold on the 2008 Tri-Nations by beating Australia in Perth tonight.
Any other result seems hardly credible. Their confidence has been hugely lifted by their historic victory over the All Blacks in Dunedin. There has been a significant boost to their self belief, a sense that if they could lay the Dunedin bogey after 87 years, then a new-look Wallabies side in Perth will not be permitted to stop their roll.
It has been wet for much of the week in the Western Australia capital. New Australian coach Robbie Deans, worried at the power and experience of the Springboks, has recalled as much experience as he could. Lote Tuqiri, Wycliff Palu and Nathan Sharpe all return, joining players like the experienced George Smith and Rocky Elsom in assembling as strong a pack as possible.
Deans knows that is where the South Africans will launch their attack, but the one area where the Wallabies look vulnerable is in the front row. If Gurthro Steenkamp can out-power the suspect tight head Al Baxter, the Wallaby scrum is in trouble and the breakaways will be forced to play off the back foot. Things tend to go downhill rapidly from there.
So, barring a particularly bad day at the office, the Springboks should head home with two wins from three on the road, ready to close out the deal and win their first Tri-Nations title since 2004, next month in South Africa.
You would think all this would have the Springbok management beaming and relaxed. Yet at times the complete opposite is the case. It seems that a strangely acute sense of alarm and sensitivity spreads through the Springbok hierarchy the minute a word of criticism is breathed.
One South African journalist wrote after Dunedin that the 'Boks had triumphed playing what he called "Jake White rugby". He was sought out and berated for the comment by the management once the report had been faxed back from South Africa to the Springboks at their Perth base.
Indeed, that very process of wanting to examine the articles written for the market back home by the travelling media, strikes me as paranoia. Will Graham Henry demand to have all the New Zealand writers' work sent to him when he heads to Cape Town in August for the Tri-Nations? Will Robbie Deans do likewise when the Australians are over there? I'd have thought both men had far too much to do to bother themselves with such triviality.
At Springbok press conferences, there is a sense that officials are there because they have to be. Proceedings are conducted efficiently but niceties kept to the bare minimum. A revealing photo taken at Thursday's conference appeared to show the senior hierarchy either asleep or bored out of their minds.
Of course, these are early days in this group's tenure and the pressures are immense. But some of them appear to have picked fights with those in the media who originally supported them. In this job, you'd assume they'd have enough hassle fighting their enemies, never mind their friends.
Trying to control the media and expecting to influence what they write is a mug's game for any body or organisation. It simply cannot be done so the excesses should either be tolerated or completely ignored.
Getting too wound up about what is written in the media seems to me to risk averting attention from the task at hand.
Peter Bills is a rugby writer for Independent News & Media in London
