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00:00:00
Speaker 1: Resumption of the nation's championship in rugby over the weekend. The Springboks were wonderful in the first half against Italy and then not so wonderful in the second half. The first match was Ireland being too strong for Argentina, which was expected, particularly given Argentina's recent lack of form. Wales just too strong for Japan. New Zealand, understandably and predictably, too strong for Scotland, although it was closer in the first half than in the second. And perhaps the most interesting result was the fairly comfortable victory for England over Australia at Twickenham. And as you heard in sports news, Rossi Erasmus announced The team for Friday night's very important clash against France and very similar match 23. One difference is that he's brought Wilco Lowe into the front row from the beginning. Thomas de Toy struggled to get the kind of dominance that Wilco got, and the Italian scrum wasn't demolished the way we expected it to be with Thomas de Toy there. And he's brought Corbis Reinach on the bench instead of Grant Williams. What think you, Craig Ray, sports editor at Daily Maverick? Hello.
00:01:14
Speaker 2: Hello. Hi, John. Yeah, I suppose it's not unexpected. He's probably taken a look at this block of four games and said this is like a World Cup knockout stage, essentially. And, you know, to do that, you're going to have to win four back-to-back tough games and probably play largely the same team the whole way through. And I think that's what he's going to be looking at because you can't see Rossi now throwing in one of the six remaining or five remaining uncapped players against Ireland next week. I mean, I suppose with Russia, anything is possible, but I don't see it. Obviously, with New Zealand undefeated, also on a maximum of 20 log points, and looking likely to get probably, well, certainly against Wales, they should get another five log points and a big score there, and then possibly to beat England. South Africa are thinking they've got to probably get a maximum of 10 points from their last two games to qualify for the final. So I don't think the team is unexpected in that sense.
00:02:15
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the youngsters who've gone there, and I thought he might have given them, before he announced the team for Italy, I thought he might have put one or two of them on the bench and brought them on with 10 minutes to just blood them into the Springbok way of doing things in a match environment. But now I'm going, maybe if we don't, if we're not top of the South... And so we have no chance of, we'll be first or second. And so we will play whoever's first or second. But we might not have a chance to win the tournament. And if that is the case, for that match, us second, playing whoever's second from the north, he might blood a couple of youngsters then. What are the chances that we have a very good recent history against France in France? They will be on their fifth choice. They might even have Maxim Lukuz, who plays most of his rugby at Scrumarth. although he does play some top 14 rugby for Bordeaux Begler. So we must be going in there not overconfident, but with a level of confidence.
00:03:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. The Springboks have won nine of their last ten tests against France. The only defeat was that one in 2022 prior to the World Cup when Peter Steff got a red card, if you remember. And I think the Bok scored a legitimate try that suddenly the TMO couldn't find pictures to show the referee. So You know, that was the only defeat they've had in a while. So, of course, the Springboks will be confident. Rashid said today, we won't be overconfident, but we will certainly go into the game with a high degree of confidence. So, it just sounds reading between the lines. The Bucks are really up for this. France, of course, got some injury problems last and fly-off is their biggest issue. Erasmus was saying today he doesn't expect Lukaku to start at fly-off. He thinks they're going to bring one of the centres in to fly-off for a more abrasive, defensive kind of player, and then bring Lukaku on in the last 20, 25 minutes to try and run them off their feet. That was his thinking, and he's not often wrong on the opposition selections either. The other thing was, is this a six-day turnaround because it was a Friday night kick-off and And would that have affected him in the selection? And Rossi actually made a good point. He said, we kicked off at 1 p.m. against Italy in Italy and we flew straight to France. The French kicked off at 9 p.m. on the Saturday and then played till 11. We've been in France. We've actually got a shorter turnaround than they have. It feels to us like it's a seven-day turnaround. So he clearly had thought this whole thing through. And he also said the Italian game wasn't that taxing in terms of physicality on the players. So all in all, I think it made sense to keep the momentum going. And as you said in your introductory remarks, I thought that first half, the Springboks were brilliant in the sense that they were just putting Italy under so much pressure, constant pressure. I actually felt sorry for them. It was suffocating for the Italians for half an hour or so before they were able to escape their 22.
00:05:19
Speaker 1: And Craig, which is the more difficult of the two games, France or Ireland, do you think?
00:05:25
Speaker 2: Sure. That's a tough one. I mean, look.
00:05:29
Speaker 1: Equal difficulty is an answer.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think maybe on paper, given France's flower of woes, maybe the Ireland game will be a bit more tricky. But, you know, yeah, flip a coin. Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll do that. Thank you very much to the sports editor of Daily Maverick, Craig Ray.