The frenemies meet in this year’s Rugby Championship opener at Ellis Park where they are expected to rip pages out of the other’s playbook
O
ne team boasts some of the most menacing forwards found anywhere in the world. The other is developing a scintillating backline capable of tearing apart any defence. Business as usual, then, for a Wallabies versus Springboks clash. Except this time, like the characters of Freaky Friday, the two sides have switched identities ahead of the first round of the Rugby Championship.
Australia might have lost the British & Irish Lions series but they were one referee’s decision at the breakdown away from causing a seismic upset. That the margin was so small was thanks largely to the thundering cameos of Will Skelton, Rob Valetini, Taniela Tupou and a handful of other meaty men who provided the front-foot grunt that was absent in the first Test in Brisbane.
As for the Boks, under attack coach Tony Brown – the former All Black fly-half – the back-to-back world champions have shed their stereotype. These are no longer the burly brutes of old but sprinters and schemers, running from deep, off-loading in the tackle, unleashing a conveyor belt of diminutive scrum-cap-wearing wingers with nitroglycerin in their boots.
