KEY POINTS:
Did Wallaby coach Robbie Deans pull the wool over everyone's eyes in Johannesburg on Saturday? By the time the swooning, adoring South African fans had bid farewell to their newly acclaimed heroes after weeks of rubbishing them, the evidence was compelling that Ellis Park had witnessed a complete joke.
Australia were so completely abject that it beggared belief that their game could disintegrate so completely from just one week earlier. Did Deans put out a side with five changes knowing that the outcome of the Tri-Nations title could not be settled here whatever the result? I suspect so.
The Wallabies were never likely to win and grab a bonus point through four tries. Thus, the outcome of this season's title was always going to rest upon what happens when the All Blacks go to Brisbane on Saturday week. Johannesburg was irrelevant and this looked like a masterstroke of strategy by the wily Deans. Asked to explain the hiding afterwards, he said languidly "I'm not too concerned about the numbers, to be frank."
Deans had justified making five changes from Durban by saying fresh legs were needed. But it looked more like he was content with the Durban victory, knowing that a win over New Zealand would clinch the title for the Wallabies, regardless of the Johannesburg match.
How else can you explain a game in which one side simply never turned up? Australia were yards slower than the Springboks in thought and deed, they looked leaden footed and lacking in desire. For sure, the Springboks at last looked a proper international side. But more explanations than that are required to unravel this strange plot.
I'll swallow these thoughts if Australia get mulched by the All Blacks in Brisbane, if there's another 40 or 50 point hammering. But I'm willing to bet there won't be and one as wily himself as New Zealand coach Graham Henry will have scoffed with derision at events in Johannesburg.
From the South Africans' point of view, rugby is a simple game when your tactical play is right on the money and the opposition go out with a death wish. But the salient point was, Australia's play right from the start represented one long suicide note, not least by their coach. Robbie Deans had selected Tatafu Polota-Nau as first choice hooker and the decision came back to haunt him. Australia's line-out was a shambles, their attempts to counter attack ludicrously ambitious and downright dangerous and they left gaping holes in their defence all over Coca Cola Park.
When an opposition wing glides over for touchdowns virtually unopposed four times in the opening 49 minutes as Jongi Nokwe did, something is seriously wrong. International rugby matches are not all over by half time. Fact is, the Wallabies were simply unrecognisable from the team that coolly took charge of the Durban Test just seven days earlier.
However, Australia were also put to the sword in astonishingly effective manner because the Springboks at last showed they had mastered some of the basics of the modern game. South Africa's tactical kicking, abysmal for the most part this Tri-Nations season, was unrecognisable from earlier games. Butch James put his team where they wanted to play with a series of long, raking downfield kicks which this time had a purpose. It was Dan Carter in Auckland revisited.
But more than that, at last South Africa showed they had grasped the need to off-load in the tackle, not keep dying with the ball. It made them so much more effective as an attacking outfit and meant they could punish Australia's ragged play to the utmost.
Quite why it has taken the whole Tri-Nations season for a squad of World Cup winners to come to terms with this fundamental part of the game remains unknown. But by making the ball do the work, an old fashioned trait I know but still one of huge relevance even in the modern game, they stretched the Wallabies' defence like some naughty schoolboy pulling grandma's favourite jumper to bits.
Australia were not only shocking at defending, they were almost as poor in attack. Peter Hynes and Lote Tuqiri somehow mucked up an easy scoring chance down the left before half time and it was a huge turning point. With South Africa ahead 12-3 at the time, that would almost certainly have got the Wallabies back to 12-10 and it could have been a different game.
As a guideline for Brisbane on Saturday week, the All Blacks will surely discount this joke without a second thought. It deserves nothing less.
