Before the match at Ellis Park last weekend, I feared that the Wallabies would struggle to overcome the altitude and ferocity of the world champion Springboks.
After 20 minutes, my worst fears were being realised. With the visitors trailing 22-0, the cameras zoomed in on the Wallabies outside centre Joseph Sua’alli. With blood flowing from his nose, he had a look of shock on his face – he personified his team. The Springboks were playing spectacular running rugby and were in total command.
As the South African crowd started their Mexican wave, the camera zoomed on to a sign that read: “Outback and Outclassed.”
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While humble is not a word we associate with the South African supporters, they had good cause to be confident because the Springboks’ physical power on display was immense and the ball movement in their attacking play was impossible to resist.
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The Boks appeared to be unstoppable.
Until they didn’t.
Something very unusual began happening inside Ellis Park. As if in a trance, fans in the Springbok fortress watched the Wallabies score three beautiful long-range tries.
When Malcom Marx was replaced at the 47 minute mark, South Africa were still leading 22-19. They should have been confident to remain in the driving seat, except they weren’t. When Marx walked from the field, his dejected face and his team-mates’ body language told the world the Boks were encountering something they had not planned for.
South African teams do not falter inside Ellis Park after leading 22-0.
Sua’alli once again personified his team. By this stage of the match, the blood that had leaked from his nose had been smeared into the face paint of a warrior.
As the Springbok lineout began to falter, so did their breakdown work as the Wallaby back row, led by Fraser McReight, dominated the physical contest.
The truly amazing reality was that it was not that the Boks were poor; it was that the Wallabies were so bloody good. The gold jerseys began to dominate every aspect of the game.
Unbelievably, the Wallabies had found the key that unlocked the South Africans’ defensive weaknesses. As Sua’alli and his captain, Harry Wilson, tore into the gaps between the rushing Springbok defenders, the outside backs exposed the swathes of space that the Boks’ compressed defensive lines leave empty in the 15-metre channels
This space the South Africans leave on the flanks is nothing new. Across the last two World Cup cycles, it has been there for all to see, but only a precious few teams have had the skill to exploit this defender-free zone because the Boks’ rushing defence cuts the ball off before it can get to those channels.
Last week in Johannesburg, Joe Schmidt’s team ripped the Boks apart in the outside flanks like no other team in recent memory. Not even Ireland, who have dominated the Springboks in recent years, have had so much success out wide.
The Wallabies had the temerity to pass the ball wide as an exit strategy from inside their own 22. The courage and precision of their craft in moving the ball to the extremities was rewarded when Max Jorgensen sprinted away for his try.
In the dying moments, as Tom Wright snatched up a wayward Jesse Kriel pass and began his 70-metre sprint, I found myself alone standing in front of the TV, screaming and yelling like I had placed a ridiculous €1,000 on the nose of a 100-1 outsider, who was now leading into the final furlong at Leopardstown.
As Wright wove through splaying Springbok defenders to seal an impossible 38-22 winning score line, Sean Maloney, the Australian rugby game commentator, yelled the question every Australian rugby lover was thinking: “Is this really happening?”
He was as perplexed as the rest of Australia but nowhere near as bamboozled as the South African supporters who started leaving their hallowed stadium long before full time.
The late Greg Davis, a revered Wallaby captain from the 1970s, said after a rare victory over New Zealand in the Shaky Isles: “The greatest sound in the world was the clicking of the turnstiles as their supporters left the ground 10 minutes before full time.”
These Wallabies might now agree with the great man.
The last time the Wallabies won at Ellis Park was in 1963, when a young Wallaby winger, John Williams, dived over to score the match-winning try. John is now 85 and no doubt he was celebrating around his TV.
Schmidt, take a bow. That was one of the greatest Wallaby performances of all time.
The result in Johannesburg has many implications.
Firstly, the Wallaby win puts a new and positive perspective on the recent Lions Tour. All of those who denigrated the Wallabies’ performances by insinuating that the Lions team was below standard have been dished up an exceptionally large and very cold plate of humble pie.
They have been proved wrong.
Those haters of Australian sport – and there are plenty in the UK who fall into that category – who suggested that the Lions series against the Wallabies should have been moved to South Africa now look as petty and foolish as their words.
If we pursued their warped logic, after last week’s result, the next Lions tour scheduled for South Africa should now go to Australia.
Lastly, the oldest moral code of rugby is currently in play for the world to see. If you disrespect your opponent, you are inviting disappointment into your life. Across the entirety of the Lions tour and at the beginning of the Rugby Championship, the Wallabies have had to endure disrespectful and spiteful rhetoric.
They have answered the insults and pettiness in the only way possible. They have gone out and played positive, courageous rugby that has won Test matches. And more power to them.
This week, Rassie Erasmus has responded by dropping 10 players from his starting XV in Johannesburg and has selected a powerful 6-2 bench for the Cape Town test. The Boks will respond.
While the Wallabies are weakened by the injury-enforced absences of Wilson and props James Slipper and Alan Ala’alatoa, they are playing with a confidence the rugby world has not witnessed since the 1990s. They will be a better team in Cape Town than they were in Johannesburg.
While the major systemic problems at the lower levels of the game in Oz have not been magically solved by a few Test match wins, the Wallabies’ courageous performances across the last six weeks have given the game in Australia hope. When you are on your knees, as the game is in Australia, hope is a very precious commodity.
That crucial message of hope was inspiringly delivered in one of the greatest comeback Test match victories in living memory.
